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Doctor Sleep is the totally unnecessary sequel to Stephen King's The Shining. I think there are vampires in it, maybe? That sort of nonsense. Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick's near-perfect take on The Shining, so you know where that dude's coming from. Doctor Sleep is also, thankfully, something else: a
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The lo-fi indie rock of San Diego trio Buddy Banter is the kind of laidback pop that comes across as utterly effortless. Elastic guitars call to mind the slacker goof-off rock of Mac Demarco. Much like many other artists in this era of Nostalgia, Buddy Banter make music that could've
Music
In The Last Waltz, the Band describes how they landed on their nondescript name. After trying out on-the-nose names such as the Honkies, and being in the middle of a typhoon of bands named things like Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Electric Prunes, and the Chocolate Watchband, Robbie Robertson and company
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The Gregarious Oranges may have a name that calls to mind the psychedelia of the late '60s, but their sound recalls a period in music that came almost a decade earlier. Drawing from the Merseybeat sound of the early '60s - which included early Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers and
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The duo of Francisco y Madero is comprised of two dudes who met through MySpace and collaborated from hundreds of miles apart - Jesse Sylvester in San Francisco and Carlos Pesina in Guadalajara, Mexico. Despite the piecemeal approach they had to forming their band, their music resonates with a form
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That Coyote describe themselves as hard rock, and while that's intermittently true, they devote a substantial amount of their time to exploring different moods and textures. Two songs off of their most recent LP add up to almost half an hour, which would fall in line with the format of
Guides
For the most part, the readers' poll in these Best of Tacoma issues vacillate between fairly predictable and completely out of left-field. No more so is this represented than in the music poll, I've found. In the past few years, winners have been as diverse as the wall-of-sound punk of
Music
It's been a constant journey for me, as a music fan, to find bands that challenge me without completely turning me away. As much as I can appreciate all sorts of adventurous music, there is a certain point that I cannot pass. Certain prog-rock bands exposed to me by my
Arts
The unspoken joke about Tacoma being nicknamed the City of Destiny is that there's no destiny to be found here. We earned that nickname through the notion that our port would be the main hub of import and export in Washington. Instead, Seattle won out. There's no guarantees of anything
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Mixing jazz elements with hyperactive synth-rock, Heatwarmer create unpredictable music that doesn't so much jostle with its time changes and flights of fancy so much as it fervently sprints to wring every little bit of inspiration possible out of a song. In doing so, they command the attention of their
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Yonatan Gat was recently voted "Best Guitarist of 2013" by the Village Voice. There. Now go to the show. More? Formerly of the Israeli garage rock powerhouses, Monotonix, Gat has turned his eyes to the far corners of musical expression. Incorporating a dizzying variety of cultural influences - tropicalia, Middle
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Manx hail from Portland, and their music is the kind of blazing, no-frills rock 'n' roll practiced by the likes of Fox and the Law. Though tinged with glam rock swagger, Manx don't pretend to be anything other than a dopamine-soaked delivery system of sick riffs to your brain parts.
Music
At the heart of it all, the power of a singer-songwriter is the ability to convey the perception of a singular vision, of one person letting out everything that's inside them. There's nothing separating them from the listener besides one guitar and one microphone. When this form finds its most
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Campfire Cassettes was started by Jonathan Buchanan as a way of getting pesky songs out of his head. Sometimes he performs with a full band, but the tour he's on finds him performing solo, with an assist from his tourmate, Todd N Todd (AKA Todd Daniels). The first song on
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Stephen Steinbrink's most recent album, Arranged Waves, was released through Melodic Records, based in Manchester, England. Judging by Steinbrink's music, Manchester has changed a lot since the raucous and experimental days of the '80s. A record label called Melodic is the perfect avenue to find Steinbrink, whose music is pristinely
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One of the things that tends to deter me from music with the "experimental" label is that it too frequently has a tendency to spiral out into free jazz journeys with no end in sight. My roots are too entrenched in pop construction for me to have much patience for
