Dead Letter Chorus/Skipping Girl Vinegar/Skinny Gean
Live @ The Troubadour
Brisbane, Australia
May 15, 2009

Hey, folks, how's it? Been some time since I've reported on the goings-on "Down Under", as we will insist on calling it, but believe me, goings-on there have been!

Yes, all is not lost on the Australian music front, as testified by the swingin' gig I scored a ticket to just the other night. Imagine my delight: my favourite venue, a cloudless evening, and a truly inspiring outfit. All signs pointing to rock and roll.

Acoustic Coal Mine @ The Mars Bar
Herman Jolly Interview

I recently sat down with Herman Jolly to discuss the migration of his Acoustic Coal Mine series to the Mars Bar. The shows now take place one Thursday per month at this Eastlake hideaway after moving from a tiny bar in Georgetown.

NadaMucho.com:  What inspired you to start Acoustic Coalmine?
Herman Jolly: This will sound totally self serving, but basically I just wanted to play a show every week. I got a night from a little bar called the Squid & Ink in Georgetown and invited my musician friends out to play acoustically. I thought it would be a great way to force other musicians to display their solo talents, without their full bands behind them.

Q&A with Kimo Muraki

Kimo Muraki is a Seattle rock star whose name may not be familiar to you. Like many good musicians, he lends out his talent to a multitude of projects that pique his interest. You see, Kimo is the secret weapon who gives bands an extra edge. He's the dude in the corner of the ring who tells the boxer which punches to throw.

Thanks to his mastery of several instruments and on-stage charisma, he's managed to land gigs with local bands as diverse as the Super Sonic Soul Pimps, Bre Loughlin, Shawn Smith and Michael Vermillion.

Branden Daniel & Everybody Gets Laid - Self Titled
Flotation Records
Buy it Now!

Branden Daniel & Everybody Gets Laid is one of Seattle's few unabashed rock n’ roll bands. No pretense, no bullshit. They've teamed up with longtime proprietors of loud, guitar driven local rock Flotation Records for their third (and best) release – a five song EP they call "Self Titled."

Patrick Watson
Wooden Arms
Secret City (2009)
By Aaron Burkhalter

Finding a competent, enjoyable and eccentric musician in Montreal these days is like finding a liberal in Seattle who refuses to shop at Walmart. The vast collection of musical Canucks are not so much riding on the coattails of the first breakthrough Canadian acts — say, Arcade Fire — as they are swept in a massive outpouring of music that North America consumes with glee.

While similar movements have their standouts and spokespeople — your basic Nirvanas being the definer of a sound — I mostly find myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of musicianship coming out of Montreal these days.

For the musician it must be more difficult. Patrick Watson's sophomore release "Patrick Watson and the Wooden Arms" will likely suffer broad strokes of comparison to his compatriots. The tragedy is people won't see the leaps and bounds the musician has made between the reasonably adept but all too Beatles-esque "Close to Paradise" and this more mature and textured second album.

Watson coats his music in messy, three-dimensional globs of paint. By splattering too much paint onto the canvass, he eliminates the canvass altogether through dense, lush and eccentric orchestration, implementing every type of instrument to backdrop otherwise minimal piano compositions.

Album Review
The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage

I've never seen a Hold Steady show, but I'm relatively confident that most nights it's way more fun than A Positive Rage would suggest.

SXSW 2009 in Review
Installment Two

We kicked things off Friday at Habana Calle 6, lured by the false promise of free drinks. Portland’s Parenthetical Girls took the stage at noon and unleashed their moody brand of experimental pop on the small but attentive audience.

I’m still not sure how I feel about frontman Zac Pennington’s singing voice. It’s a bit of a mixture between Morrissey and Julie Andrews, which can be hard to swallow. I do appreciate his commitment to character though. Sporting a patterned sweater vest over a mint green button-up shirt, Pennington had no qualms hopping off the stage and skipping through the half-awake crowd as if prancing through hills alive with the sound of music.