Popular Shapes - “Symmetrical Girl” from 2003’s Bikini Style.

Seattle’s Popular Shapes came and went in a flash, when the band’s vocalist/guitarist left for San Francisco. Bikini Style was a barely 20+ minute 9 track explosion of pop-no-wave — recorded, mixed, and mastered by Kurt Bloch — that rivaled bands everywhere (Futureheads and Ex-Models included) for that No New York/early XTC/Talking Heads pop spaz sound of the late 70s. This album has a strong Fugazi odor all over as well. This seemed like a band that got bored really easily, and were ready to try brand new things before they released anything. They’re missed.

“Symmetrical Girl” would be their ‘hit’ of this album if there was a chance.

Bill Nelson’s Red Noise “Don’t Touch Me (I’m Electric)” from 1979’s Sound-On-Sound

Somewhere between Contortions, Devo, and early XTC, Bill Nelson decided to try out the New Wave/No Wave synth-punk-spazz-pop thing. This was a very brief phase for Bill Nelson, just barely post Be-Bop Deluxe, just barely before his solo career.

Racebannon — from Bloomington, Indiana — doing “The Killer”(?) live — from their Acid Or Blood album from 2008.

I’ve loved this band ever since my friend Brian introduced them to me several years ago, because they immediately bridged two marriages of loud rock into this sick quadrophilia of volume: Metal/Hardcore + Experimental/Weirdo.  The band are just as much MX-80 Sound fans as they are Slayer fans.

My only shortcoming with Racebannon is that I wish they could taper the songs off sooner than they actually do. On the other hand, I’m still drawn to what they do, and it’s best if I don’t get what I wish.

I can’t think of any other band this constantly energetic.

rRope’s “Nr 23” live at Aron’s Records in L.A., March 1996.

rRope were another great Bay Area rock band that helped expand the “weirdo rock” thing that had a spotlight in the 90’s but has somewhat been put aside.  While bands like Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 (also from the Bay Area), Trumans Water (Portland via San Diego), and Polvo (Chapel Hill) had a relatively higher profile under that moniker, there were far more just as deserving who barely got the accolades they deserved. rRope are on the top of that list. One of the band mmebers has thankfully uploaded a dozen live rRope YouTube clips… This is the clearest and best one of the bunch.

Sick Bees’ “Strawhat’s Dogs” (from 2000’s My Pleasure) is my first Tumblr Audio request! Well, sort of.  I had gotten two followers really excited about Seattle female rock duo Sick Bees with my previous entry on “Work It” apparently, so much that I had a couple of private messages asking me to post another song by them.  One person wanted a “RAWKER”.  The other person wanted to know if Sick Bees had pretty songs too.  So I chose this one, as it satisfies both.

There’s a tenser, louder Young-Marble-Giants-meets-B-52’s thing happening for the first two verses and choruses here.  It’s really lovely, sad, and catchy.  Without notice, the song then triggers the distortion, and starts whirling out with sparks.  As the songs nears the end, it gets weirder and weirder all the way until the final 5 beats.

All three major releases by Sick Bees are great.  1998’s On The One, 2000’s My Pleasure of course, and 2005’s The Marina Album.  The latter two were released on Up Records.  On Up’s site, one can read a short bio on the band.  The best thing about this page is the band photo. It’s extremely cute and oozes “fucking cool” all at once.

Sick Bees’ “Work It” is a raunchy femme no-wave ditty about Jane Fonda from 2000.

Why would two strange ladies named Julio and Starla write a song fantasizing about a smoked-out Jane Fonda workout in just over a minute of wonderful noise is beyond me, but I’m grateful this songs exists, much more this brief discography of grossly overlooked Seattle noisemakers.

Julio, Starla.. please come back!  We hardly knew ye.

NOTE: I found out too late that the CD from whence this track comes, My Pleasure, displays a track listing that makes it easy to parse as one off, due to an unlisted incidental track early in the CD.  This track is not called “Peaches-N-Herb” as originally noted.

My favorite song of 2009: Talbot Tagora “Johnny Lazor”.   I’ve gone into detail about why I feel this band’s album is the best of last year, but I’m still listening to this album several times a week.  And this song is the one I replay over and over again.  The tail end of the song is simply the best.