The 30 Best Concerts in Seattle This Week: July 11-17, 2016 Our Music Critics' Picks for Indoor and Outdoor Concerts During July 11-17

Emily Nokes Sad circumstances led to the creation of an amazing benefit show that will put A Frames, The Spits, and Jonathan Richman (the ex-Modern Lovers frontman and troubadour supreme pictured here) all on the same bill.

Whether this Julember weather makes you want to hide inside an indoor concert venue, or you're getting cabin fever and would rather head to an event like the Timber! Outdoor Music Festival, our music critics have got you covered. Buy your tickets now for these 30 noteworthy concerts in Seattle this week, hand-picked by our music critics, ranging from '90s hatchback rock to sexually liberated husband-and-wife duos to which metal dudes are secretly really into candy-colored mini horses. Check out our full music calendar for more ideas on how to fill the rest of your rain-soaked days.

JULY 11

Kimock

Steve Kimock—a California guitar virtuoso who’s popular on the jam-band circuit—produces some of the supplest, sweetest tones you’ll ever hear, displaying similarities to those of Jerry Garcia and Bill Frisell. While Kimock is a phenomenal technical player, he also imbues his parts with an acute sensitivity that will vibrate in your most sensitive neurons. He doesn’t so much shred as flow, with pellucid grace. Check out the 1994 album The Psychedelic Guitar Circus Kimock cut with Harvey Mandel, Henry Kaiser, and Freddie Roulette for proof. Any musician who’s played with several members of the Grateful Dead and the Meters—plus the late keyboard legend Bernie Worrell—deserves your undivided respect. DAVE SEGAL

Boss Hog

Noisy garage-blues punks Boss Hog have been putting forth sexually liberated, pervasive rock since 1989. Core members husband/wife duo Jon Spencer/Cristina Martinez started playing together in noise-rock supergroup Pussy Galore and continued making saucy, noisy punk with Boss Hog on labels like Amphetamine Reptile and In the Red. Spencer does his curmudgeonly drunkard vocal thing, while Martinez imparts a Kim Gordon–like art-rock presence. The guitars are fierce and jagged alongside grungy bass riffs, carrying a heavier metal/blues influence than many of their contemporaries. Boss Hog’s first new release since 1999, Brood Star, has the primitive, feral rock vibe of their past recordings, maintaining the grimy ’n’ gruesome power that should translate to a cantankerously fun live show. BRITTNIE FULLER

2016 Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival

Seattle Chamber Music Society is once again throwing their Summer Festival, with free informal recitals and full orchestral performances for all ages throughout the month of July. Season passes and single tickets are both available, so go get more classical music in your life. This week's events include a Monday evening concert of Ludwig van Beethoven, Jeremy Turner, Robert Schumann, and Franz Joseph Haydn, a Wednesday evening concert of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, and Zoltan Kodaly, and a Friday evening concert of Felix Mendelssohn, Sergei Prokofiev, and Franz Schubert. (Through July 30)

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Music Under the Stars

The concept of Music Under the Stars is simple but compelling: A professional or student ensemble sets up in a park and plays to whoever shows up at 7:15pm, often folk with picnic blankets in tow and maybe a surreptitious bottle of wine or two. Then, at eight, Benaroya Hall pipes in whatever performance is happening that night to the assembled throng — it’s basically two shows for the price of none! This week, there will be a Monday night show in West Seattle, a Wednesday night show on Capitol Hill, and Friday night shows in Columbia City and First Hill. (Through July 30)

JULY 12

Wye Oak with Tuskha

I didn’t get even a little bit sad when Baltimore duo Wye Oak transitioned from making very good loud-quiet-loud dark country rock to making very good synthy dream pop more indicative of that region’s indie scene with 2014’s Shriek. The team retained Jenn Wasner’s smoky casual-power vocals, the dramatic crunch of the heavy guitar sounds that drew me to the early records turned into surprising synth compositions in the new stuff, the lyrics were still broody-excellent, and it seemed as if they only added unto their store of possible musical gestures. Now the band is touring behind a new album, Tween, a collection of outtakes from Civilian (which preserved the early guitar-heavy darknesses) and Shriek (which is brighter and all synth). Chronologically and musically, Tween exists between these albums and presents the best of both worlds. The single “Watching the Waiting” blows right off a Wilson Phillips sea breeze, but it’s propelled by a galloping beat. Sudden bursts of bright, messed-with guitar on songs like “Better (For Esther)” and the dark left turns on tracks like “If You Should See” make me glad Wye Oak saved these songs from the cutting-room floor. RICH SMITH

Babymetal

Pop music and extreme heavy metal share a terse and often secretive relationship—Lady Gaga is an out-of-the-closet metalhead, and every so often you’ll hear someone like Yngwie Malmsteen cover ABBA. But the two genres have never collided with so much saccharine sweetness as with Japan’s Babymetal. Emphasis on saccharine: They even play a song called “Gimme Chocolate.” The three pubescent female idols who front the outfit sing and dance like typical Japanese pop icons while their masked backing band play ripping technical-death-metal licks. It’s absurd, over the top, and tons of fun. You don’t need a patch jacket to bang your head during songs like “Megitsune.” JOSEPH SCHAFER

Dragged Into Sunlight, Primitive Man, Cult Leader, Heiress

Let’s not humanize metal bands. No one wants to find out that Gorguts members trade dessert recipes or that Xasthur is a Brony. So kudos to Britain’s Dragged Into Sunlight for adhering to total anonymity and allowing us to assume they leave their unlit Blair Witch basements only when it’s time to unleash their agoraphobic blend of black-metal dissonance and doom-raddled sludge on the masses. As if they weren’t bleak enough, Dragged Into Sunlight’s most recent offering is a collaborative album with stomach-churning noise artist Gnaw Their Tongues, which pushes their music further out of the realm of catharsis and into a full-on endurance test in sonic misery. Consequently, you might want to decompress with some My Little Pony episodes after tonight’s show. BRIAN COOK

Fear of Men, Puro Instinct, Ghost Soda

Brighton pop outfit Fear of Men come to Seattle (for the first time ever, maybe?) to showcase their deeply woven melodicism in the intimate space of the Sunset, with LA pop alchemists Puro Instinct, and local void-sifter Ghost Soda.

JULY 13

Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Jay Som

Mitski had me at her latest album title, Puberty 2. She pulled me deeper with hooded vocals born from an earnest power, à la Sharon Van Etten (with an occasional Angel Olsen–esque tremor) and an open seeking of clearer tones. She punches through with devastatingly honest lyrics, reminiscent of braying your true intentions at anyone you’ve attempted to care about, with all the subtlety of a brass section, loud and twisted, tucking and rolling her way into your heart. Leading into Mitski’s set is Japanese Breakfast, the solo project of Michelle Zauner, whose recent release Psychopomp has had me clutching at atmospheric pearls of teenage tact, as they finally come into their own. If this is Zauner’s first release in this form, we have so much more to look forward to. KIM SELLING

Josh Medina, LFZ, House II, Offing, DJ Degenerate

LFZ is the solo project of versatile LA guitarist/synth player Sean Smith, a former member of Citay whose résumé includes a stint in a Black Sabbath tribute group. He also heads the excellent Stimulus Progression label, which reissued titles by Harmonia, Les Vampyrettes, and Science Fiction—the latter the ultra-rare experimental LP Terrible Lizards. On his 2015 self-titled debut album, LFZ launches emotive, questing drones into those exalted zones heard on recordings by Fripp & Eno and Peter Michael Hamel. The two sidelong pieces are cosmic yet intimate, celestial yet rooted in a ceremonial gravitas. LFZ’s second full-length, Pointless Prism, opts for shorter reveries that tap into the same kind of invigorating, soul-inflating synth tableaux as that new-age deity J.D. Emmanuel. California duo House II peddle an engagingly hypnagogic strain of electronic music that would be considered pop if Cluster had been as big as the Beatles. DAVE SEGAL

Margaret Glaspy, Kevin Murphy

It’s hard to believe that Margaret Glaspy is even singing in English, or any other language I would innately understand (I’m a white person who grew up in the United States, I only know one thing). Her warped tone and hauntingly demure scowl brings to mind a toxic tumbleweed, rolling down the broken set of Our Town. It’s undeniably American, with a slick Southern Gothic thumbprint, tempered by a hollow directness that comes from trauma survived. She’s worth listening to simply to translate these emotions for yourself, in any way you can. KIM SELLING

FWD: Toro Y Moi (DJ Set)

Chaz Bundick as Toro Y Moi has proved to be a prolific pop and electronica artist, and now will turn his bleep bloops to you, dear listener, at a solo DJ set at the Q.

JULY 14

Timber! Outdoor Music Festival

Timber! Outdoor Music Festival returns to Carnation for another year of diverse music and small-town, outdoor fun. The all-star line-up includes Langhorne Slim & the Law, Telekinesis, Deep Sea Diver, The Moondoggies, The Maldives, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, Chastity Belt, Lemolo, Jason Webley, Ravenna Woods with Seattle Kokon Taiko, Maszer, Acapulco Lips, Animal Eyes, Sundries, Blood Squad, Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, John Dillon, Travis Thompson, Paris Alexa, and Carson Mchone. There will also be activities including a 5K run, swimming, mountain biking, stargazing, and tree-climbing. (Through July 16)

Psych Fest: Being John McLaughlin, Music of Santana, Cheap Thrills

Psychedelic music will never die, as long as people still need sonic panaceas to escape mundane and/or horrible reality. The Royal Room’s three-night festival offers a panoramic view of Seattle’s robust psych underground, with nods to past superstars of transcendent rock, fusion, and blues: Music of Santana, featuring original drummer Michael Shrieve; Being John McLaughlin, a blazing homage to Mahavishnu Orchestra’s first two classic LPs; and Cheap Thrills, a Big Brother & the Holding Company tribute band starring Sarah Rudinoff as Janis Joplin. Polyglot keyboard genius Wayne Horvitz and trip-making groups Scriptures, Shitty Person, and Wild Powwers round out the mind-expanding bill. DAVE SEGAL (Through July 16)

Motor: Ancient Methods, Derivatives, Lust Strength, Biome

Berlin-based Ancient Methods (Michael Wollenhaupt) cloaks his techno tracks in bleak industrial soot, but the effect is less Wax Trax! and more early Severed Heads and Meat Beat Manifesto repurposed for discerning 21st-century ears, coupled with Speedy J’s toughest output and the sinister propulsion of the Sandwell District crew. While they’re largely as dark as a presidential candidate’s history, Ancient Methods’ tracks also possess a relentless stroboscopic intensity. Downward is upward, if you catch my drift. Derivatives (aka Vancouver producer Josh Rose) recently dropped a fantastic 12-inch EP on Medical Records subsidiary Transfusions called Forwards, Futures, and Options. Its four tracks scan as minimal techno, but they have an incisive grittiness and stoic grandeur that are anything but antiseptic. Warming up for these badasses: acutely knowledgeable minimal-techno DJ Biome (Louise Croff Blake) and steely-nerved, industrial-techno savants Lust Strength. DAVE SEGAL

Grace Love and the True Loves

Nine-piece soul sensation Grace Love and the True Loves bring their funk-infused fire to the SAM for a night of sex and sugar, free of charge.

Sergio Mendes: 50 Years

Probable father of all Brazilians, Sergio Mendes has been incalculably influential on pop, jazz, and samba genres as a producer, composer, keyboardist, and vocalist. Enjoy his worldly presence as Mendes breaks out his five-decade-spanning album catalog and really throws around his old school Rio swing. (Through July 17)

Phish

Lifelong jammers Phish headline a weekend at the Gorge, as they do every year with little to no fanfare, but thousands of people to tie-dye it up with them for three whole days. If you never got to follow the Dead, this is basically the second coming, at least when it comes to the fervor of dedicated jam band fans. (Through July 16)

JULY 15

Newaxeyes, Aeon Fux, Lilac, Canh Solo, DJ Salinger

Last year at Northwest Film Forum, Seattle quartet Newaxeyes performed a live soundtrack for Ridley Scott’s classic Alien; they did the 1979 sci-fi horror film justice, and then some. Thankfully, the performance was recorded and young local label Freakout Records is celebrating the release of the double cassette tonight. Titled The 8th Passenger, Newaxeyes’ score vividly captures the godforsaken foreboding and nerve-racking claustrophobia that permeate Alien—as well as including some interludes of forlorn beauty. The band displays a masterly command of dynamics and textures that out-scare (out-Skerritt?) the work of original soundtracker Jerry Goldsmith. The 8th Passenger could be the start of a long, rewarding career in cinema for Newaxeyes. DAVE SEGAL

Arctic Flowers, Arcane, Sloppy Kisses, Bacteria

Portland band Arctic Flowers’ post-punk sound is informed by UK peace-punk/anarcho trailblazers like Crass or Poison Girls, but it transcends pure mimicry. Fusing several subgenres, Arctic Flowers meld UK post-punk’s icy-cool aesthetic with politically discontented anarcho punk, yet still sound modern. Fellow Portlanders Sloppy Kisses combine driving, pop-inflected, ’77-style punk with a comical lyrical self-awareness, bashing punk-scene hypocrisies. New locals Bacteria play wigged-out, early-’80s-style synth punk, and based on the one-track demo on their Bandcamp, we should expect even more fractured ’n’ spazzy sounds. Brooding Seattle post-punks Arcane will also goth up the night with their Christian Death–nodding brand of death rock, filtered through hazy guitar atmospheres. BRITTNIE FULLER

A Frames, The Spits, Jonathan Richman

This amazing benefit show came about through very sad circumstances. Local music fan Cara Joy Clausen has been undergoing grueling experimental treatment for stage IV ocular melanoma. She asked well-connected friends to assemble her dream bill to help with medical costs. Ergo, we have an exciting A Frames reunion and wild-ass garage-punks the Spits. When Scared of Chaka had to drop out, Clausen contacted ex–Modern Lovers frontman and troubadour supreme Jonathan Richman herself. Surprisingly, he agreed! Richman is one of the greatest entertainers in rock—still. You’ll find few cleverer storytellers or more memorable melody makers than Richman—although, tragically, he probably doesn’t perform “Astral Plane” anymore. The much-missed A Frames—Erin Sullivan, Lars Finberg, and Min Yee—released three classic albums in the ’00s that proved they were Seattle’s most scabrous, powerful rock group, a minimalist threshing machine whose tunes tenaciously bum-rushed your ears and ransacked your brain—and somehow made you laugh at their doom-laden lyrics. DAVE SEGAL

Dälek, Crypts, Teeph

From their noisy inception, New Jersey’s Dälek have been branded hiphop experimentalists because of rhymes delivered over a clanging, droning, near-industrial backdrop and their penchant for touring with outer-fringe hard rock and metal bands like the Melvins and Dillinger Escape Plan. But really, it’s a counterintuitive designation. Hiphop has always been one of the most assimilationist of all music genres, from Afrika Bambaataa grooving on Kraftwerk to Public Enemy starting mosh pits with Anthrax to Kanye West saltpetering his repertoire with the dude from Coldplay. So really, Dälek hew to hiphop’s unorthodox orthodoxy more than is often recognized. Still, they remain genre outliers: The trio’s latest record, Asphalt for Eden, their first in six years, was released on Profound Lore, a metal label. JASON BRACELIN

The Fellowship of the Ring with the Seattle Symphony

Experience The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film of the beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy, on the big screen as the Seattle Symphony performs the score live and in sync with the film's progression. This epic score, composed and orchestrated by Academy Award-winner Howard Shore, will be performed live by the orchestras and two full choirs to full emotional, visual, and audial effect. (Through July 17)

JULY 16

Channel Fest

Think of this marathon event as a convention for the Seattle area’s indie record label ecosphere. During the daytime, as you’re scoping the goods of more than 30 labels (e.g., MOTOR, Medical, Further, Light in the Attic, Neon Sigh, Eiderdown, Alterity 101), some of the city’s most knowledgeable DJs (and, full disclosure, I) will be spinning tunes of mostly obscure origin. At night, the scene shifts to 21+ and the cover is $12 ($20 gets you a tote bag, too). Portland metal misfits Gaytheist, minimal-synth charmers Roladex, ruthless, marauding street-punks Steal Shit Do Drugs, gauzy dance-popster Hibou, and a secret headliner bring the live heat. This is a wonderful concept that should boost awareness of Seattle’s thriving underground-music infrastructure. Make some key connections while you’re at it. DAVE SEGAL

Barenaked Ladies, OMD, Howard Jones

What an odd bill: two mediocrities sandwiching British synth-pop royalty Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD). Canada’s Barenaked Ladies are the aural equivalent of khaki trousers. Are they really worthy of your important nostalgia dollars? Nuh-uh. Howard Jones? I don’t think even staunch 1980s-pop worshipper Charles Mudede can muster interest in this über-bland Englishman now. If you’re going to trek to Marymoor Park, do so for OMD, whose precious, immaculate compositions have influenced hundreds since their early-’80s heyday. Their self-titled 1980 debut LP remains a masterpiece of enchanting melodies, fascinating rhythms, and cherubic vocals. At their best, core members Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys recast Kraftwerk’s elegant electro-pop gestalt to a Northern English sensibility. OMD’s tunes have weathered the decades better than most in the genre and soundly refute the misconception that synth-based music lacks emotion. DAVE SEGAL

Meghan Trainor with Hailee Steinfeld

Being a fat white woman, I first have to say this to stay real to my demographic: Meghan Trainor is a terrible idea. She’s got a serviceably good singing voice that excels in her blue-eyed-soul collabs with more talented contemporaries, but her sassy-fingered shtick founded in her being acceptably curvy without actually being anywhere outside of pop-culture physical regulations is tired as shit. Meghan, fire whatever Xanga quiz algorithm is writing your songs. Fire your stylist, your handler, and your parents. Fire whoever told you that faux-rapping in the middle of Christian-leaning early-’00s Mandy Moore cast-offs was a solid plan. Opening for Trainor is burgeoning star Hailee Steinfeld, who earned my goodwill with True Grit and then shat all over it with Pitch Perfect 2. Here’s hoping she’s somewhat less offensively bad than Trainor. KIM SELLING

Tony Joe White with Michael Wohl

Tony Joe White’s new album is Rain Crow, and he doesn’t sound ready to die. He sounds ready to give up. I find that scarier. He’s written hits for Elvis, Tina Turner, Brook Benton, and Tom Jones, but his own voice, at 72, while not quite as set-in-quartz as Bill Callahan’s, comes down plain, simple, croaky. Everything about this album is low-key, which is why I ignored it at first, until I turned it up, until I could hear small variants, sand shifting, the concentration of a convict watching shadows shift on his wall, waiting for a scuttling roach to shudder his mind. All small stories—of recognition, appreciation, rejection—become big stories under the headphone microscope. ANDREW HAMLIN

Holy Grail, Exmortus, Spelicaster, DJ Roaringblood

It’s difficult to describe the appeal of heavy metal in 2016. Roaring guitars haven’t been a significant part of serious rock or pop music in more than a decade, and what good is fantastic escapism in the face of the emotive plaintiveness of indie, the streetwise swagger of hiphop, or the sexual catharsis of R&B? The best I can do is quote former Top Gear host (and conservative pro-Brexit doofus) Jeremy Clarkson: Speed is the only truly modern sensation. So, yes, even though traditional shredders Holy Grail, Spellcaster, and especially Exmortus sound like they’ve been cryogenically frozen since 1986, the music they make is still as cutting edge and vital as it ever was. Feelings are fine the rest of the workweek, but Saturday night is for speed. JOSEPH SCHAFER

Youryoungbody, Aeon Fux, Nightspace

Insert your life into the dark dream world of Youryoungbody, Aeon Fux, and Nightspace, all of whom are sure to bring heavy synth work, swirling electronic pop, and very witchy vibes to your ears, brain, and butt (because you'll also be shaking it).