Articles By: Candra Kolodziej 
Bumbershoot 2012: Day 3 Review
1 PM Starbucks Stage Monday afternoon was easy. The crowds hadn’t yet swelled into unbearable, impossible to navigate masses (I hope I’m not the only one who felt that this year’s festival was way too crowded), and it was even a good time to stop along the vendor fairways and peruse the goods, although doing so made me wonder about the vendor vetting process—why was there a tent dedicated exclusively to high thread-count sheets? Who buys sheet sets at a [...]
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Bumbershoot 2012: Day 2 Review
1:30 PM The Promenade Stage Katie Kate, the lady hip-hoper with half-a-head of long blond hair, and Seattle’s heart in the palm of her hand, is funny. She’s local and while her raps aren’t changing the world, they are socially relevant on a local level. She finesses the crowd (when I arrived she was assuring them, “You’re the people who matter”), she wails lines like “read my motherfucking tote bag,” and tosses quality canvas totes into the audience. She jokes [...]
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Bumbershoot 2012 Day One Review
Bumbershoot, Seattle’s end-of-summer, arts and music festival, is part of the long standing, sad-but-true, local joke about summer. Offering an abundance of indoor venues and activities—more than most summer festival coordinators would consider reasonable—and named with a wink to the umbrellas that historically accessorize festival attire (Bumbershoot’s website has a FAQ which reads: “May I bring an umbrella?”), Bumbershoot is a manifestation of the adaptability and devil-may-care attitude that Seattleites take, by necessity, toward their beloved nemesis: the rain. (Nota [...]
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Lady Antebellum – Own The Night review
Disclaimer: I don’t understand Lady Antebellum’s popularity. I recognize that, especially over the last few years, the Country Music Association has been recycling artists, and that the category (which Lady Antebellum won in 2008) of Best New Artist only came into existence in that same year—replacing the less pointedly titled Horizon Award (a name which implies acknowledgement of the potential to achieve instead of honoring actual achievement). I also realize that the winner of the Horizon Award in 2007 was [...]
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Glen Campbell – Ghost On The Canvas review
Glen Campbell doesn’t exactly need any new fans. He’s been in show business for 50 years, sold over 45 million records, gone Gold, Platinum, and Double-Platinum, and even had his own television show. His latest album Ghost on the Canvas, is a collection of music by a man who has earned his self-indulgence. For an uninitiated or barely initiated listener, the album may reek of Bob Dylan’s so-called “born-again” gospel period. The two records Dylan produced in the late 70s [...]
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CSS – La Liberación review
CSS (an abreivation for Cansei de Ser Sexy, or “Got Tired of Being Sexy”) is a Brazilian band with an identity crisis. It’s true that all burgeoning artists emulate others as a part of their artistic maturation, but it’s unfortunate, given all the fully developed musical talents in the world, that CSS was given the job while they were still in a stage of musical adolescence. Sub Pop signed them in 2006, and La Liberación is their third album. It’s [...]
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Bumbershoot 2011 Day 3
Bumbershoot 2011 Day Three (September 5th, 2011 – Seattle, Washington) ** There may not be a better way to begin a day of musical carousing than by watching Charles Bradley, otherwise known as “The Screaming Eagle of Soul,” and “The Black Swan,” take the stage for an intimate, live KEXP performance. The Gainesville, Florida born funk-star and soul-singer is a true legend, and it’s easy to see why. Draped in a royal-red, sequined blazer, and offering a reverential bow, Bradley [...]
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Bumbershoot 2011 Day Two
Bumbershoot 2011 Day Two (September 4th, 2011 – Seattle, Washington) **Atari Teenage Riot Maybe it was a mistake to kick-off the second, glorious, sunny day of Bumbershoot (a fun, colloquial way of saying umbrella), Seattle’s annual international music and arts festival, by arriving at 6pm after seven hours on an airplane, and walking straight into the dark pit of the Exhibition Hall music stage. Watching Anti-Flag rage incoherently about social injustice to a group of half-interested, disaffected, fans who couldn’t [...]
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Milk Maid – Yucca review
Let Martin Cohen’s new solo project, Milk Maid, be a lesson to you: never underestimate the bassist. Until early this year that’s who Cohen was for the Manchester based band Nine Black Alps. His new album, Yucca, doesn’t necessarily boggle the mind with previously hidden musical genius, but it does offer the promise of great things to come and more than justifies his breaking free from a band that might have been growing a little stale. Primarily an album about [...]
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The Chain Gang of 1974 – The Wayward Fire review
Confusion of spirit will not be found in The Wayward Fire, the third album by The Chain Gang of 1974. In fact, to listen to The Wayward Fire, is to know that Kamtin Mohager (the man behind the Chang Gang curtain) is lovingly, un-ironically enthused by his eighties-inspired beats and lyrics; so much so that many of his songs go on too long, like over-indulged children placing their own orders at a restaurant. Pop-80s culture has been making a comeback [...]
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