Silverlake Mixtape

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with bands from Silverlake, L.A. (sort of like my obsession with bands from Canada — BSS, Stars, Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire…). It’s not like I go out of my way to like every band from there, but it just turns out that lots of bands I like end up being from there. So in honor of Silverlake, I’ve made a little “mixtape” of those I often play on repeat. Enjoy!

1 “Kissing Families” Silversun Pickups
2 “I Made a Resolution” Sea Wolf
3 “On Fire” Sebadoh (Lou Barlow)
4 “The Golden Age” Beck
5 “Just a Dream” Great Northern
6 “Maps” Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Karen O)
7 “Portion for Foxes” Rilo Kiley
8 “Nevermind the Phonecalls” Earlimart
9 “Perfect Games” The Broken West
10 “Say Yes” Elliott Smith

T-shirt envy.

Sometimes you have to judge bands by their t-shirts—especially ones typeset in Helvetica.

Last night I headed to Fremont (ugh) with music pals, Morgan, Royal and Saif, to hear one of my favorites, Sea Wolf play at the High Dive. Even though I hate the Fremont crowd at night, it was well worth it to hear opening band, the Jealous Girlfriends from Brooklyn. Definitely t-shirt worthy. Special thanks to Royal for being my personal ATM, yet again!

***Show the love.

To expand upon my experience at Sasquatch, I must point out one of the highlights of our day:

This particular fan “show(ed) the love” like a madman throughout the New Pornographers set by bouncing up and down (yes, in white gym shorts, sans jock strap) across the lawn at the Gorge. Pretty soon he was able to get the entire crowd to join in his cheer, at which point someone asked, “What kind of acid are you on?” His response? “NO ACID NEEDED!!!!!” Oh yeah.

'squatch 08

This past Saturday, pals and I headed out to the Columbia River Gorge for Sasquatch Music Festival. Seeing a show at the Gorge is pretty amazing as long as the weather is nice and the music doesn’t suck. Besides, where else can you kick off summer by getting sunburned, drinking $12 beers, and seeing people completely high***?

Here’s my music lineup for the day:

1. Fleet Foxes (love)
2. Dengue Fever (ugh)
3. Beirut (good)
4. Joshua Morrison (eh)
5. Kathleen Edwards (good ol’ alt country, even if my eardrums almost blew out during the sound test)
6. Fleet Foxes (take 2, not as exciting— apparently the National was too depressed to play according to Rainn Wilson)
7. Destroyer (Dan Bejar, a.k.a purple shirt guy who sounds like A.C. Newman from NP, turns out he IS from NP. Duh.)
8. New Pornographers (Always great. How did the purple shirt guy get over here so quick?)
9. M.I.A. (So fun, how can you not love her?)
10. Okkervil River (I caught the tail end of this, and I had so much fun dancing like crazy on my own— this may have been the highlight of my day)
11. Modest Mouse (I wish I enjoyed this more?)
12. R.E.M. (definitely not wow; we wished we heard more classic REM, but it was getting cold and rainy so we decided to call it quits)

I heart black kids.

I totally rallied tonight and watched one of the best shows in a long time: the Black Kids with Cut Copy at Neumos. Both bands were great, but the Black Kids were AMAZING. Love, love, love Reggie and his sis, Ali. We danced like fools all night long! Special thanks to Morgan for the heads up, wish you could have made it.

On a side note, I’ve never seen Neumos more crowded and packed with hipsters before (sigh). This once again proves how much we all hate it there…but then where else would we go?