Former Selves is a man, a self described myth and an iconic-Twitter related Batman expert. On top of his great personality makes fuzzy bedroom pop music. It’s sometimes cheesy, sometimes funky, and sometimes silly, but there continues to be some lingering genius. He’s an Olympian soul who is stuck in Lynnwood. Yes, the Ducktails and Atlas Sound inspiration is obvious but Selves continues to break personal ground with Northwestern stylized melodies.

Clearly his music is amateur but pointing that out misses the point of the bedroom pop. Selves has a quirky sound found in a restless soul. He has a familiar weirdness about him; a daring imagination that exists like a child inside of our past. Former Selves has tapped into something and it sure is fun to hear what he’s found.

“Running For The Bus” is what happens when you smoke weed during a meant-to-be-productive afternoon. “Coffee With Gaddafi” has all the material to be a hit- with its polarizing harmonica and demoralizing message, we’re on a catchy high-rise drinking mochas with one of the world’s most recently deceased evil dudes.

His new album can be found at www.formerselves.org and can be downloaded for free. In the meantime check out his music video for “Dust In The Cartridge”

Packed at the Sea Monster, people all jammed together in that tiny space, dancing, whooping it up as they tore it up. Joe Doria taking psycho solos, wring so much freaky modal mayhem on that Hammond B3 organ, sick sound.  Amazing left hand bass work too. Andy Coe mad chops on the guitar, tore it up on final tune, Walter Becker worthy. Cliff Colon saxophone rips scintillating solos, gets the crowd going as he builds and builds and builds.  Drummer Tarik Abouzied keeps it moving and frenetic. They had a trombone player too, didn’t catch his name but that added nice texture. These guys are a Seattle Tuesday night institution, glad to see it’s still going strong.

Terry Malts is a three-piece punk rock band from San Francisco. When they first debuted there was a mysteriousness about who they were. They were known for showing up to a gig, getting rowdy, amazing the crowd and disappearing. They avoided interviews or providing any known information. It turned out Terry Malts is kind of a side project/spin off of another San Fran band, the popular Magic Bullets. The mysteriousness was a ploy to distance Terry Malts from Magic Bullets. The story is that the members of Magic Bullets traded instruments, morphed their sound, and created Terry Malts.

Their music is really fun. Its a dirty garage pop punk sound, full of noisy guitars, catchy riffs, tangible vocals, and “eiy eiy eiy eiy eiy” sing alongs. They’ve released the spunky ‘I’m Neurotic’ single and the recent ‘Something About You’ EP on San Fran’s Slumberland Records. I personally recommend the song ‘No sir, I’m Not a Christian’ off of the latter release. Terry Malts is a band to check out if you’re looking for a revival of dirty Power-Pop and a fan of loud/fast/fun concerts.

Here some pics by Adam Forslund: