The Bacon Review 

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Jan 24th

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#1 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Myths (+2) by Pickwick No band has had more of an exciting 2011, and no band has made 2011 more exciting to me, musically, than Seattle’s Pickwick. Unless you are immersed in the Seattle music scene or listen to KEXP regularly, chances are you’ve not heard of Pickwick. Pickwick are the future of Seattle’s music scene. We’re emerging from a Fleet-Foxes...

Jan 1st

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Dec 31st

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Dec 30th

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Dec 29th

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#5 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Build A Rocket Boys! by Elbow I’m starting to see a pattern here. With the King of Limbs at #7, Bon Iver at #6, and now Elbow at #5, my affinity for rich orchestration and heavy layering is readily apparent. Maybe even a tad predictable. Thankfully, numbers four through one don’t fall in this same category, so predictions can remain off target. Elbow is...

Dec 28th

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Dec 27th

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Dec 26th

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Dec 24th

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Dec 23rd

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#10 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar The Youth Die Young by Mad Rad The Top 10 of the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar starts with an album that won’t be found on any other Best of 2011 list anywhere, because it came out 2010. As the list starts counting down on Dec. 1, I can’t very well include albums that come out in December on the list. Additionally, I feel an album needs at least a month of...

Dec 22nd

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#11 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Last Night On Earth by Noah and the Whale According to Last.fm, I listened to Noah and the Whale more than anyone else in 2011 with the exception of Radiohead. Before logging on to Last.fm to see just how much NatW I had listened to in the past year, I had a hunch they were at #1. But being second to the allmighty Radiohead is a comfortable spot to be...

Dec 21st

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Dec 20th

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Dec 19th

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#14 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Hot Sauce Committee Part Two by Beastie Boys What the Beastie Boys have been able to accomplish doing the same thing for 25 years defies common sense. Creating very intelligent, highly derivative, mocking, biting, white-boy hip hop year in and year out cannot be easy, but Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock always seem to be having the most fun possible doing pretty...

Dec 19th

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Dec 18th

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Dec 16th

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Dec 15th

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#18 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar The Whole Love by Wilco It’s always surprising when a band that you’ve written off as “only for the superfans” is able to come back into your everyday playlist with something new. I can think of very few instances when this has occurred (R.E.M. and Underworld come to mind). And now I can add Wilco to that list, with their fantastic album The Whole Love,...

Dec 14th

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#19 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar My Goodness by My Goodness Two-musician bands — one on drums, one on guitar — seem to be quite the popular arrangement of late. White Stripes (god rest their souls), The Black Keys, and Wye Oak all fit that mode, along with My Goodness, who come in at #19 on the Musical Bacon Calendar. From Seattle, this duo really packs a punch. You’d be hard pressed...

Dec 13th

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Dec 12th

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#21 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Gloss Drop by Battles Bands often change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes they become something so different it’s hard to recognize the similarity. With the stark differences between their debut album, Mirrored, and this year’s Gloss Drop, Battles fits into the “something so different” camp. I wrote about their changes...

Dec 12th

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Dec 10th

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Dec 9th

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Dec 8th

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#25 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Fan Chosen Covers (Best of) by Eef Barzelay There are some voices out there that really just do it for me. Robin Pecknold. John Roderick. Thom Yorke. They could sing the Maxwell House song and I’d quickly open my wallet and buy the special collector’s edition deluxe 45 (“With unreleased b-side ‘Dr. Pepper song!’”). Until late last year, I hadn’t...

Dec 7th

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#26 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar TKOL RMX 1234567 by Radiohead OK, this is a weird one.1 I had a different album in at #26 not 5 minutes ago, but after having listened to that album one more time, I decided I couldn’t possibly recommend it to anyone. Love is fleeting. So I was left reaching into the bin of throwaways for something else to go here. Enter a mostly OK remix album of...

Dec 6th

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Dec 5th

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#28 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar Heavy Boots & Underwoods by Ben Fisher Seattle is a great town for music, but you probably already knew that. #28 on the list is the perfect example of this, because I first heard Ben Fisher busking on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the weekly Ballard Farmers Market. Just him and his guitar, standing on the sidewalk, playing songs that he wrote,...

Dec 5th

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#29 on the 2011 Musical Bacon Calendar The Rip Tide by Beirut Zach Condon, former child prodigy and current indie rock band leader, is in his prime. After his band Beirut debuted five years ago with the phenomenal album Gulag Orkestar, they’ve continued to crank out warm, multi-instrumental, world-music influenced folk music year after year. Beirut appeared at No. 9 on 2009’s Musical Advent...

Dec 3rd

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Dec 2nd

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Introducing the 2011 edition of the Musical Bacon Calendar. Every year, December 1 seems to come out of nowhere, leaving me scrambling to put together my list for the year. And every year, as I look over the year’s albums that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, I’m surprised by the wealth of albums to choose from. The answers to questions that you may have of me (such as “How do you have so much time to...

Dec 1st

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Nov 14th

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Fascinatingly dark video for The Rural Alberta Advantage’s “Tornado ’87,” from one of my favorite albums from the past year, Departing. Not sure what it means, but I like it.

Nov 11th

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“Spencer Krug, from such bands as Wolf Parade! and Sunset Rubdown! is coming to...”

– Me, from my show review of the Moonface show at the Croc last Saturday. You can read the rest of the review over at Another Rainy Saturday.

Oct 18th

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Sep 21st

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Sep 13th

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Sep 10th

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Sep 8th

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Aug 11th

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Just stumbled across this this evening. Had no idea Built to Spill had any music videos, let alone for one of their best-ever songs, “Untrustable Part 2,” from their best album Perfect From Now On. Granted, it’s a truncated version of the song, but it’s still quite amazing that this got produced. Thinking the band had watched Tool’s videos from Undertow one too many times when they dreamt this one...

Apr 22nd

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Feb 11th

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“For a band that’s been around just a little while but only now having settled...”

– Me, reviewing last Saturday’s Campfire OK show at the Columbia City Theater. Jump over to Another Rainy Saturday and read about what you missed.

Feb 8th

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Me, over at Another Rainy Saturday: After the Broken West became permanently broken in 2009, Ross Flournoy languished in obscurity for about a year. According to the Apex Manor page over at their label Merge Records, Flournoy was inspired to get back into songwriting by participating in a weeklong write and then record contest over at NPR’s Monitor Mix: Now feeling inspired for the...

Feb 5th

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Live show review: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals...

My first concert of 2011 was outside the indie-rock realm, but at one of my favorite venues in Seattle. Now, this is not to say that there aren’t any sexy female-led bands in indie rock. Chan Marshall, Neko Case, Liz Phair — these are all “sexy” women. But there’s is an understated sort of appeal. And there is nothing understated about Grace Potter. At 27, she’s got the band, the crowd, the...

Feb 1st

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Fleet Foxes, with the title track from their forthcoming sophomore album, Helplessness Blues. Expanding from the Crosby Stills & Nash sound upon which they built their foundation, this new song has everything I loved about the Fleet Foxes from the very beginning: changing time signatures, echo-laden harmonies, and full, rich acoustics. Dig it.

Feb 1st

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Meanwhile, over at Another Rainy Saturday…

New for 2011: linking from The Bacon Review to what I write in other places (usually at Another Rainy Saturday). First up, a preview for tomorrow night’s Grace Potter & The Nocturnals show at the Crocodile: Grace Potter, the 27-year old firebrand with the Janis Joplin gravel in her chest, leads the Nocturnals, her Southern Rock-based band, with anything but grace. Try blunt-force,...

Jan 26th

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New URL means re-posted RSS feed

Yesterday I switched the URL for The Bacon Review from http://baconreview.tumlbr.com to http://baconreview.com. And of course, this means that the RSS feed has reset itself, presenting the most recent 20 entries for you to re-read. So sorry about that! Hope you like the new look of the place, too. If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, please click here to jump over to the site and check it...

Jan 24th

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Jan 22nd

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Jan 21st