The Royal Basement

MUSIC REVIEWS. PODCAST. CHUCKLES. DESIGN. CATS. SEATTLE, WA USA

The Royal Basement is a blog/podcast focusing on music, art, baseball, cats, and other wonders of life, based in Seattle, Washington, USA.

The Royal Basement is a division of Kentucky Chrome Industries.

Filtering by Category: podcast

NEW PODCASTS ARE UP: LIL BUB & RYAN ALLEN

New podcasts are up with Lil Bub & Her Dudes (Mike Bridavsky and Matt Tobey) as well as a good chat with Ryan Allen (of Thunderbirds Are Now, Destroy This Place, Ryan Allen and His Extra Arms). Head over to the podcast page and get your listen on! 

The Royal Pick for October 20, 2014: SLOAN at the Tractor Tavern

It's easy to use the term "Beatle-esque" to compare any group with multiple songwriters and a decent grasp of vocal harmonies to the Fab Four, but it's definitely not an unfair comparison with Toronto's Sloan. Having just celebrated their twenty year anniversary as a band, Sloan has a surplus of gems in their catalog that they could easily rest on; they've been around long enough to know their strengths and define their sound, but they're still ambitious enough to push at those boundaries and continue to re-define their own rich legacy in the pop universe.  

Take, for example, Sloan's new double LP (Commonwealth). Taking a conceptual nod from Kiss' solo albums, each member of the band takes on a side of the LP, with results ranging from pristine, baroque pop to gauzy shoegaze to the expansive 18 minute long "Fourty-Eight Portraits", which builds from the clanging clatter of machine shop parts up into a rolling, spacy boil and glides along through multiple mini-movements that form together seamlessly. While a lot of power pop artists have dedicated their careers to being fantastic at one particular trick, Sloan is a four-headed monster of songwriters. Those four distinct voices and approaches to pop songcraft compliment and conflict with each other, but hearing a band 22 years into their career embrace that struggle (especially with the segmented nature of Commonwealth) is a rare and beautiful thing indeed.

Basically, if you miss this show, you're a knucklehead. 

Also, please tune in next month for an episode of the Royal Basement podcast featuring Sloan!

Sloan plays at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle, WA on October 20, 2014. Tickets are $15. 

Welcome! Vilkommen! Bienvenu

Greetings from The Royal Basement! Take your damn shoes off.

If you're wondering "what the heck is this", The Royal Basement is an audio zine/blog/podcast located in a basement in the Seattle, Washington area. It is the love child of one Greg Franklin (that's me), who has written for Seattle Weekly/Village Voice/The Pitch/a bunch of zines you've never heard of since the mid-90's. 

Things are a little dusty around these parts as we get up and running. We're currently archiving oodles of old content, working on new reviews and features, and trying to pay a healthy amount of attention to our beloved Kansas City Royals

We've got brand new podcasts up with Robb MacLean (Limbeck/The Young Dudes) and John Cobb. Go listen to them over here at the podcast page. Both Robb and John did some acoustic sessions for the podcast and played some of their favorite songs, as well as talking about their musical origins. They're a real hoot, and I'm thrilled that they could both be on. 

We've got more podcasts coming up really soon, as well as more concert reviews and record reviews and other good-feelings a-plenty. Keep in touch with us. 

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