Festivals, Concert Series, and Mega Shows, Part 3: Something About Trees

This weekend is Boise, Idaho's Treefort Music Fest. Checking out their website, I am seriously impressed with their lineup. Not because of the big names they landed (they list Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings as their big headliner, followed by Animal Collective and The Walkmen, hardly show-stealing headliners if you ask me), but because of the dozens and dozens of small, awesome bands. Consider this your mini PNW SXSW. A NXNW, if you will. What also struck me? That there are so many bands from Idaho! It's like a music fanatic's dream, discovering tons of new music (and isn't that how SXSW started out?) Other notables at the festival include bands whom we have covered here in the blog already, Naomi Punk and Stickers, and other Seattle-area bands, including The Pharmacy, Pickwick, Deep Sea Diver, Rose Windows, Polyrhythmics, Truckasaurus, Kithkin, Pony Time, Kris Orlowski, Neighbors, and Edmund Wayne. There are tons of other bands from all over the nation, though. If you're looking to go on a road trip this weekend, Treefort Music Fest should be your destination.


 

 Timber! Outdoor Music Festival is Seattle's newest music festival, taking place in rural King County parks in Carnation July 26-27. Think of it as the brother festival to Artist Home's already popular Doe Bay Fest. Look forward to camping and glamping in conditions that are bound to be far nicer than what you might find at venues such as The Gorge. The festival website offers a variety of camping options for you to purchase. They haven't finished announcing the lineup, but I'm excited to see The Helio Sequence on the bill. Other notables include in-vogue band Lemolo and the fun and funky Kithkin. Festival tickets are only $45 (excluding camping), so if you are willing to potentially pass up Capitol Hill Block Party (the date doesn't appear to be set yet, but last year it was on this last weekend in July), these are a good deal. Who doesn't love grooving outside in the gorgeous PNW summer sunshine?




Interested in seeing where and when there are music festivals, concert series and mega shows? Check out the list I've compiled under the page link to the right titled Festivals, Concert Series, and Mega Shows for 2013! Did I miss anything? Leave a comment!

Artist Review: Naomi Punk

 

Through either time or inclination, Seattleites have largely abandoned grunge. I found this out soon after moving here when I went to a show where the band were heckled for doing a Nirvana song just because they were “in Seattle after all”. So you can imagine my surprise when I started to hear more and more about an Olympia-based band called Naomi Punk whose inspiration is, in part, derived from that lineage.

The band, which recently moved from Seattle’s own Couple Skate Records to the excellent Captured Tracks label, does have many of aforementioned grunge fixins, such as simple, chord heavy and distortion-rich melodies. However, somehow they manage to avoid its pitfalls. For one thing, while the songs are heavily distorted, they don’t insult your intelligence by using tacky song structures filled with predictable “this is the chorus” style pandering. Instead they crash along, injecting just enough of their art-punk influence to create music that feels personal and relevant, but without that annoying insistence that you become depressed or fill your closet with flannel.

The Feeling has just been re-released on Captured Tracks and Naomi Punk will be playing alongside Texas’ Parquet Courts and Olympia’s Sick Sad World at Cairo Seattle on the 19^th of this month. Enjoy the video for “Burned body” below.