2008 In Music

This is an abbreviated version of my Favorites of 2008. For the full list go to my MySpace blog here. These are the three albums I felt passionate enough to write about, and they are in all honesty a couple of my favorite albums of the last few years.

3) King Khan & The Shrines - The Supreme Genius of King Khan and The Shrines

You will not find a more eclectic, rousing, dirty electric, and insanely catchy album released in the last year, not to mention a more batshit insane front man. "Supreme Genius" is a compilation album of sorts combining tracks from What Is?!?! with a bunch of stuff from Kahn's catalog, and it a experience for you ears to behold. Some label it "garage rock" but to me it's more like the bastard love child of Little Richard, The Rolling Stones, Eric Budron and War, [Cracked Out] James Brown, and 60's Psychedelia. Like my next entry it's really a labor of love that embraces all the insane amounts of fun and excitement that can come from playing straight up rock and roll. This is a band i'm ashamed of not listening to earlier.

2) The Moondoggies - Don't Be a Stranger

I read a review a while back that put it best, "this is the kind of country music that would of existed a long time ago if Garth Brooks never came into existence." That said, I don't think I've heard an album that is such a joyous celebration of the resounding fun and energy that music can bring into our lives in a long time. The Moondoggies are a band that when hearing their music makes me, for the first time in a while, pretty damn optimistic about where music is headed in the next few years. Bands like the Fleet Foxes and Grand Archives have got a lot of attention in the last year or so for kick starting this sort of hearkening back to "real" country / folk / roots music, but The Moondoggies affliction for conjuring up tunes that are more akin to the likes the The Byrd's, The Band, The Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young and The Flying Burrito Brothers style of high energy foot stomping Country Rock is more my cup of tea. Listening to this album really makes me feel like music is coming full circle, this is music being made by people my same age, who apparently grew up listening to the same stuff my parents had me listening to, and its really awesome to see them take those influences and make something new of it. Not to mention these are some of the coolest and friendliest musicians I have meet in a long ass time, coming from such a pretentious Seattle music scene, it's good to know that there are some people out there who are just having fun with what they are doing, and doing a damn good job at it.

1) The Walkmen - You & Me

It's usually pretty difficult for me to pick a resounding number one album of the year for me, but this year You & Me takes the cake. It's not that all the other albums on my list aren't great, there just really wasn't another album that struck a chord with me quite like this one. This album is really the bands return to form. It's a more mature, sparse and swaggering version of 2001's Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, an album which is amongst my all time favorites. You & Me is the perfect album for all moods, (my favorite being the sitting at home drunk by myself self-loathing variety) it leads and directs you through its different movements and textures pretty much flawlessly through Leithauser's painful crooning vocals, and the bands incredible tight musicianship. I think my favorite part about this band is that they everything you'd expect, nothing more and nothing less. They know the style of music they play, and they stick to it, and develop it, and layer it, they don't stray to far from their original formula and lose track, cause their is absolutely no reason for them too. I really think they are one of the single best American bands of the 2000's, their no bullshit rock takes you back to a time when music could be appreciated more for its sparse craft and beauty and not it's unnecessary flair.

Yes, I Still Do Write About Music...Occasionally

I sort of fell off the bandwagon with my writing over the last 6 months...my last stint as News Editor kind of took a lot out of me.

That said, here is the first article I've written in months, a short feature on Seattle's Helms Alee for What's Up Magazine.

Helms Alee
Crushing Skulls

By Taylor Scaggs

The media exposure of the Seattle music scene in the last year is unlike anything we’ve seen since the early 90’s. While it’s always been a flourishing creative mecca, bands like the Fleet Foxes, with their debut album, have single handily put Seattle back on the map as a buzz worthy music town, and rightfully so. A hearkening back to traditional folk and hymn’s is just the tip of the iceberg as to where Seattle bands ventured last year though, and nothing can express that more than a band whose curious moniker is old sailor terminology for “duck!”

Helms Alee’s 2008 debut Night Terror is a blast to the ass of every other metal album put out last year, and will most likely go under the radar as one of the freshest and most promising Seattle debuts in recent memory. Comprised of seasoned veterans, guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen (Harkonen, Roy, These Arms are Snakes), bassist/vocalist Dana James and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis (Lozen), Helms is truly a sum of its parts.

After a few EPs, the band recorded Night Terror in Ballard last winter. Produced, engineered and mixed by Matt Bayles (who has worked with the likes of Narrows, Minus the Bear, Isis and Mastodon) was released on Hydra Head records in August.

“We wanted to get [Night Terror] out without dwelling to hard on the details,” Verellen said. “We’re pretty much shooting from the hip as far as how we come across.”

Verellen’s assessment of the band, and the album, is overwhelmingly modest and humble. Night Terror soars across the playing field of influences and sounds, and calling it simply a metal album is doing it, and the band, an extreme disservice. Songs like “A New Roll” tumble through dreamy melodies that are juxtaposed amongst Verellen’s commanding hazy raspy shouts and crushing riffs along James’ and Hoz’s gleaming harmonizing. The harmonizing, and the vocals in general, are one of the first things that readily stand out on first listen. They lend themselves strikingly well to the album’s optimistically spacious and gloomy tones and sets their sound apart from other bands of a remotely similar ilk.

Then there are songs like “Big Spider,” a sludgy, doomy, stoner stew akin to Houdini era Melvins, and Russian Circles. Trying to pigeonhole Helms Alee into any one of these genres though is too difficult. That is what makes them so great, they truly embrace them all, and make them into their own completely refreshing brand of loud, crushing instrumentation. Something only bands like fellow Hydra Head mates Torche have been able to pull off recently.

“I feel really good about how the record came out,” Verellen said. “I try not to think too hard about what influences creep in, otherwise you start second guessing just about everything.”

Having played with Harkonen at the 3B Showoff several times, Verellen said he knows playing in Bellingham is always a fun… and painful experience. The band recently played a show with our own Black Eyes and Neckties at the Comet, and was on tour with Minus the Bear last year. Word is Helms Alee’s live shows are a site to behold, and as of what to expect from their upcoming show in Bellingham, Verellen simply remarked, “riffs.”

Helms Alee will perform at Cap Hansen’s on Saturday, Jan. 31. For more about the band, visit [http://www.myspace.com/helmsaleemusic ]

Something I didn't write about in the story was that Verellen also is in the business of making his own custom amplifiers. Check them out, as they look pretty damn cool.

www.verellenamplifiers.com
www.myspace.com/verellenamplifiers