Slowly but surely, folks, we’re coming out of the holiday show slowdown.
There are several solid options over the next seven days, including a very busy Thursday night.
First up, a band that could very well blow up big in 2012:
Seattle indie-soul band Pickwick will play a free show at McMenamins on Thursday night. My colleague David Jasper spoke with guitarist Michael Parker about the band’s evolution.
From the start, Pickwick sounded fairly derivative of Wilco.
“We all loved ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,’” Parker said, referring to Wilco’s acclaimed 2002 album. Taking a cue from Wilco, Pickwick infused their sound with elements of country and psychedelia, with a touch of “some electronic stuff,” said Parker.
They would stick to their sonic guns for two years before facing facts. Namely, that they were stuck in the middle of the alt-country pack.
The Wilco influence “didn’t really work for us. We have some friends who do music like that and are amazing at it, but for us, it just wasn’t really a good fit,” said Parker.
In 2010, he and (frontman Galen) Disston met and discussed breaking up the band, “just because the stuff we were doing, we weren’t very proud of,” Parker said. “One of the things we do well as a group is we’re just brutally honest. That’s part of our relationship that had already been established by that point. We can talk to each other about things that might be a little uncomfortable, but we’re still friends at the end of the day.”
Instead of disbanding, they scrapped the alt-country songs and started over.
“We threw it all away. We went from having close to 20 songs to having nothing,” Parker said. Inspired by Sam Cooke’s croon, Pickwick moved to Motown, so to speak, creating a soulful sound that showcased Disston’s singing ability.
You should read the whole thing right here.
Elsewhere this this week’s music section: Polyrhythmics kicks off a new series of Volcanic Punk Parties and San Francisco DJ Comma headlines another Slipmat Science show, plus Matt Hopper & The Roman Candles, The Selfless Riot’s new album, Feeding Frenzy, Boxcar Stringband, Harley Bourbon, Night Under the Covers’ Laurel Canyon night and more!
Tags: Comma, Feeding Frenzy, Matt Hopper & The Roman Candles, Pickwick, Polyrhythmics, Slipmat Science, The Selfless Riot
