Seattle rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis showed a masterful aptitude for the concept song on their 2012 smash, “the Heist” — whether that meant tracks about thrift shopping, marriage equality or the dangers of sneaker culture. On their second, 13-track album, “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made,” they’ve moved in a slightly different direction, focusing on tight lyrics and a more celebratory vibe.
Read MoreFrom Ozzy Osbourne’s throaty screams to Tony Iommi’s ribbons of guitar notes, Black Sabbath was Black Sabbath at least one more time Saturday (Feb. 6) at the Tacoma Dome.
It was the Northwest stop of the band’s final tour, billed as “The End.” It’s safe to say the expectations of the 20,000-plus fans there were met — and probably exceeded.
Read MoreIf you wanted to see the show, you had to stand. If you wanted to see the band play the final song, “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” then you had to practically jump over audience members in front of you.
Read More“Seasons change, mad things rearrange,” sang Lauryn Hill on The Fugees’ “How Many Mics.”
That message is appropriate for another trio born out of hip-hop, Seattle’s The Flavr Blue — Hollis Wong-Wear (lately with Macklemore), Lace Cadence and Parker Joe — who celebrate the release of their romantic EP, “Love Notes,” Thursday (Dec. 17) at Chop Suey.
Though the three musicians came from hip-hop, on the new album they are rebelling from the four-on-the-floor, boom-bap of rap and embracing a more spacious sound, with reverb guitars and big synthesizer swells.
Read MoreNo one knows the story for sure, but let’s proceed with this version: In the spring of 1898, a procession of musicians strode down a New Orleans city street swaying their trumpets to a tune. Blocks away, a young cornet player tapped his horn against the curb, put it to his lips and began to blow so loud and so powerfully that the parade stopped. Spellbound, it detoured toward his sound.
Read MoreI thought Interstellar was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen – in fact about an hour in, I’d taken my wrist watch off, started smelling it, and playing with it as if it was a bird. To me – and I read, write and edit work every day – it felt like the Nolans threw millions of dollars at a half-baked short story they wrote over the weekend. But Michael Park, lecturer at Stanford University and holder of a Ph.D in theoretical particle physics from Rutgers University, saw the movie’s merits – and then some. Park, whose research has focused mostly on developing strategies for searching for new laws of physics at the Large Hadron Collider but who now is studying cosmology, is, um, really smart. He and I talked about the gravity, Einstein and the blight.
Read MoreWhat’s your favorite current Seattle band? If you have trouble answering (or if you draw a blank after Macklemore), we’re not going to judge. But we are going to suggest it’s time to check in with the city’s thriving indie music scene. New local bands are exploring sounds, blurring genre boundaries (though we’ve wrestled them into categories here) and playing vibrant live shows all over town (see our Live Music Venue guide). Even with this sampler of 50 bands, we haven’t scratched the surface of Seattle music. Listen right here—where you can stream songs from all 50 bands—and also try tuning in to KEXP (the city’s unsurpassed discovery engine for local music) for a whole week. Soon enough, you’ll have an answer to the above question—and you might just go on and on.
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