STG Annoucnes Upcoming Events: The xx, Other Lives and More

Seattle Theatre Group (STG) announces the following concerts going on sale this week.

Date: Saturday, October 6, 2012 @ 8:00pm
Venue: Paramount Theatre
Price: $33.50 advance, $36.50 day of show, not including applicable fees
Seating: General Admission Flat Floor, Reserved Balcony
Ticketing Information: Available online at Tickets.com, in person at the Paramount Theatre box office (M-F 10am-6pm), 24-hour kiosks located outside the Paramount & Moore Theatres, charge by phone at (877) 784-4849, or online at STGPresents.org.
 
*All tickets include a digital download bundle of the xx's new album, Coexist.
 
London, summer, 2009: The xx arrive with their debut album 'xx' - a whole new sound of love, loss and longing. The xx are four kids who formed at London's Elliot School in 2005, the south-west comprehensive that by now you may well be aware produced the likes of dubstep enigma Burial, Hot Chip, and Fourtet's Kieren Hebden: Three alumni, that whilst their ten academic years apart prevents any real affiliation, share a peculiar artistic thread with their high school's newest heroes, Each have innovated: setting their own musical agenda with a unique fusion of synthetics and live instrumentation to powerful, alien effect. But alone The xx stand, not only in the singularity of their influences and sound, but in the universal resonance of their music. Gingerly dodging the storm cloud of hype hysteria that plagues seemingly every other new buzz act of the moment, Romy Madley Croft (lead vocals, guitar), Oliver Sim (lead vocals, bass), Baria Qureshi (keyboards, guitar) and Jamie Smith (beats, samples) are edging into our hearts. Their unique make-up is a second nature marriage of 2009's urban/guitar tribes, in one corner fluttering new wave inspired reverberation, in the other, plumes of textured, post-dubstep sub-bass and figuratively, their defining core of rich R&B vocal textures. Their debut album 'xx' will be released on XL Recording's bleeding edge Young Turks imprint (Holy Fuck, Gang Gang Dance, El Guincho). Eschewing big name producers and studios, 'xx' sees Jamie continuing in the producer role he's asserted since The xx's conception, tweaking and refining the band's beautifully crafted songs into a debut record that's utterly contemporary and undeniably timeless. The enveloping, vocal partnership of best friends and songwriters Romy and Oliver is one that would've dropped-jaws in any decade, and set amidst a shivering soundscape of beats and plucks, their bedroom-reared concrete-soul is being justly heralded as the UK's most original and treasured alt-pop artifact of late. 'xx' will be preceded by a new single 'Basic Space' on 3rd August. Meanwhile, having recently toured with The Big Pink and Micachu & The Shapes, The xx will play a handful of highly anticipated shows throughout the summer.

Other Lives

Venue: The Neptune (All Ages / Bar w/ Valid ID)

Price: $15.00 not including applicable fees

Seating: General Admission

On Sale: Friday, July 20, 2012 @ 10am

Ticketing Information: Available online at Tickets.com, in person at the Paramount Theatre box office (M-F 10am-6pm), 24-hour kiosks located outside the Paramount & Moore Theatres, charge by phone at (877) 784-4849, or online at STGPresents.org.

There's no point in trying to unearth an obvious "single" in Other Lives' second album, Tamer Animals. Here's a better idea instead: succumb. Let every last song wash over you like proper long players once did, from the swift strings and pulsating horns-a technique learned from old Philip Glass LPs-of "Dark Horse" to the richly orchestrated denouement of "Heading East," a cut that could have been cribbed from the early instrumental sessions of Other Lives' old band Kunek. "The core of that band is still with me," says frontman Jesse Tabish, who founded Kunek with cellist Jenny Hsu and drummer Colby Owens. "In a lot of ways, it's still what I gravitate towards, songwriting wise." Unlike their self-titled debut-a studio-bound effort that was produced by Beck's longtime drummer, Joey Waronker-Tamer Animals was tracked in the privacy of the band's own space in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Waronker eventually mixed the entire affair and sanded down its edges, but it took Other Lives 14 months to get to that point. We're not talking about lazy Sunday sessions here, either. More like 11 songs that were carefully sculpted over time, with certain sounds creeping up when the record called for them, and nothing that's forced or rushed. "Every sound has a purpose without being too indulgent," explains Tabish. "There's nothing like, 'Hey, let's rock out on this!' It's homemade in a way. For better or for worse, it's all our sound." That sound amounts to one hell of a sweeping listen-an atmosphere, a mood, a state of mind. So while you might find yourself going back to the minor-key melodies of "Dust Bowl III" or the Morricone-caliber arrangements of "Old Statues" more often than not, it's all part of a greater whole. And since Tabish prefers treating his vocals like an instrument, the lyrics are left open to interpretation. To be honest, they don't even matter in the end. What matters is howTamer Animals makes you feel; how it aims to hit you in the chest...hard, like the Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Ros LPs that made Tabish want to write this kind of music in the first place. (If you can believe it, he played in punk bands as a kid and didn't resume the piano lessons he started in third grade until he was 18.)  "I'd rather us be an ensemble than a rock band," he says. "That's my goal-to get away from those traditional ideas. It's not a strength in numbers kinda thing, either, where 12 people are on stage and five of them are playing the same melody. When the music calls for that many players, we'll go there. We'll destroy the band itself." He's smiling as he says that. And frankly, so are we.

Venue: The Neptune (All Ages / Bar w/ Valid ID)
Price: $21.00 advance, $25.00 day of show, not including applicable fees
Seating: General Admission
On Sale: Friday, July 20, 2012 @ 10am
Ticketing Information: Available online atTickets.com, in person at the Paramount Theatre box office (M-F 10am-6pm), 24-hour kiosks located outside the Paramount & Moore Theatres, charge by phone at (877) 784-4849, or online at STGPresents.org.

Punch Brothers are the New York City-based quintet of mandolinist Chris Thile, guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny and violinist Gabe Witcher.  Their new album Who's Feeling Young Now?, produced and engineered by Jacquire King, contains some of the most exhilaratingly direct, sonically daring performances the group has ever recorded. Already, Vanity Fair has hailed the album as "their most expressive work yet as an ensemble -- sophisticated, pop-y, kinetic and profound, all at once." The New Yorker calls it "a mystical alchemy of old-time music and contemporary sensibilities" As the five members, ranging in age from their mid-20's to mid-30's, have matured together on the road and in the studio, their approach to writing and performing has, conversely, become looser, simpler, and, in a sense, more unaffectedly youthful. In fact, the title song on the new disc-featuring rumbling bass, skittering violin, and wailing multi-tracked vocals-sounds like hard-charging string-band punk rock. The group, as virtuosic as it is freewheeling, evolved out of a 2007 collaboration on Thile's string-band suite, The Blind Leading the Blind, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in a series curated by composer John Adams. Its debut disc for Nonesuch Records, Punch, was released in 2008, followed by the Jon Brion-produced Antifogmatic (2010). The five members each have impressive resumes within the progressive string-band scene and are regularly sought-after as guest stars and session players. Punch Brothers are currently featured on the soundtrack to The Hunger Games and the Chieftains' 50th Anniversary disc, Voice Of Ages. As guitarist Eldridge notes, "Every little side project we've done has helped us come back to Punch Brothers with new ideas and new energy and a new sense of confidence, a righteous need to create stuff."