Seattle Weekly, May 07, 2014

MAY 7-13, 2014 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 19

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VISUAL ARTS: THE RETURN OF EDITH MACEFIELD. P.23 | FILM: PUT YOUR SHIRT ON, ZAC EFRON! P.27

AN OPENING NIGHT PARTY FOR SPECTACLE: THE MUSIC VIDEO

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FESTIVAL, VALUE VILLAGE THRIFT SUPERSTORE, AND WORLD FAMOUS

2

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT/////// The first museum exhibition to celebrate the art and history of the music video through sight and sound. See cinematic productions by acclaimed directors Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, and Spike Jonze and artists like Michael Jackson, Arcade Fire, Daft Punk, Madonna, David Bowie, A-Ha, Kanye West, Beyonce, Bob Dylan, Blur, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Radiohead, Björk, and OK Go. With legendary props, interactive experiences, and more than 300 videos, Spectacle: The Music Video traces the evolution of the genre and cements its place at the forefront of creative technology.

This exhibition is made possible in part by support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

inside» May 7–May 13, 2014 » SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM

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news&comment 5

END OF INNOCENCE

BY CHASON GORDON | Olympia gets

its first stripper pole. Plus: the playoffs keep Seattle’s NBA dreams alive.

7

OH, BROTHER

BY RICK ANDERSON | Edward Courtney was accused of molesting his students, rehabilitated, and accused again. And again. And again.

food&drink 15 THE STAFF SUPPER

BY NICOLE SPRINKLE | You’ll have

what they’re having.

15 | FOOD NEWS/THE WEEKLY DISH 17 | CHEFS’ MEMORIES OF MOM

arts&culture 18 ORCHESTRA, RESURGENT

BY GAVIN BORCHERT | How a local ensemble rebounded from tragedy.

18 | THE PICK LIST 20 | OPENING NIGHTS | Sci-Fi in SoDo. 21 | PERFORMANCE 23 | VISUAL ARTS 25 | BOOKS

27 FILM

OPENING THIS WEEK | Bloody revenge,

30 | FILM CALENDAR

32 MUSIC

Live music? There’s an app for that.

Plus: Sam Boshnack’s ode to a forgotten journalist, and Rodrigo y Gabriela’s guitarstrumming genius.

32 | SEVEN NIGHTS

odds&ends 39 | CLASSIFIEDS

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»15 Editor-in-Chief Mark Baumgarten EDITORIAL Senior Editor Nina Shapiro Food Editor Nicole Sprinkle Arts Editor Brian Miller Entertainment Editor Gwendolyn Elliott Editorial Operations Manager Gavin Borchert Staff Writers Ellis E. Conklin, Matt Driscoll, Kelton Sears Editorial Interns Thomas James, Diana Le, Laurel Rice Contributing Writers Rick Anderson, Sean Axmaker, James Ballinger, Michael Berry, Sara Billups, Margaret Friedman, Zach Geballe, Dusty Henry, Megan Hill, Robert Horton, Patrick Hutchison, Sara D. Jones, Seth Kolloen, Sandra Kurtz, Dave Lake, John Longenbaugh, Jessie McKenna, Jenna Nand, Terra Clarke Olsen, Brian Palmer, Kevin Phinney, Keegan Prosser, Mark Rahner, Michael Stusser, Jacob Uitti

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news&comment

A Different Kind of Pole

Why the NBA Playoffs Matter

W

Olympia gets its very first strip club.

BY CHASON GORDON

A

SPORTSBALL

Desire is far enough from schools and parks to be safe, bright enough to be seen.

The Olympia City Council did not take up the moratorium, but, at the end of February, it did vote to increase fees and the time allotted to review applications.

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed to open,” says Gundersen, “but they should look at a lot more facts and find ways to maybe make it safe for the dancers.” She hoped the city would post human trafficking warnings and hotline numbers in the club, do more stringent screening of employees, offer training on human trafficking, and hand out stronger consequences for any violation of the ordinance.

Beyond some delays with his application, Bussanich says he hasn’t met with much resistance in the community. “The only people that I’ve heard of having a problem are the group that watches human trafficking, and I agree. I’m against human trafficking, too. Never been involved with it, and there’s no chance of it happening here in Olympia, at my club especially. But I understand that people get passionate about their feelings. I understand that. I understand both sides of it.”

Since opening in April, Bussanich has seen upwards of 300 customers each weekend, and regularly gets about 20 resumes a day. He plans to expand Desire in the coming months.

Though the legislative session has ended, I ask Bussanich if any politicians have come in yet.

“Not that we know of,” he says. “But our door’s open to them.”

news@seattleweekly.com

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray recently announced his (complicated) plan to (eventually) raise Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. The nation took notice: “In the end, the minimum wage activists will find out that their political dreams conflict with economics.” —Jeffrey Dorfman, Forbes ... “If you’re a lowwage worker in Seattle good luck figuring out how much you will earn under Mayor Ed Murray’s proposal.” —Arun Gupta, In These Times ... “For all the red flags, I’m oddly glad [Ed Murray is] giving it a try.... Better that one city’s job market crash than a whole country’s.” —Jordan Weissman, Slate

A league this competitive can try expansion—likely Seattle’s only chance. two teams that won fewer than 20 games this year—Milwaukee and Philadelphia—were pretty much losing on purpose, hoping to land a franchise player through the draft or with a surfeit of salary cap room. Teams like Miami and (I hate to admit it) Oklahoma City have proven that building from nothing isn’t just possible; it might be the most effective way to amass championshiplevel talent.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, mismanaged teams like the Clippers would linger at the bottom of the standings for a decade. And yet the NBA expanded anyway, adding six franchises between 1989 and 1996. Now even an idiot like Donald Sterling can find enough talent to build a winner.

His Clippers—well, his for now—will play Clay Bennett’s Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. Good luck figuring out who to root for in that one.

Back to expansion: If the question of competitive balance is removed from the equation, the only question left is how much money NBA owners should ask for as an expansion fee. Likely, a lot. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently suggested that $1 billion would be fair. Happily for Seattle, Steve Ballmer’s $18.8 billion fortune is backing Hansen’s bid. If it’s money the NBA wants, we’ve got it.

So if you root for anything during the remainder of the NBA playoffs, keep rooting for close series. And for Microsoft stock to go up.

sportsball@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

Inside the cabaret, bright tubes of red light outline the mirrors behind the moderately-sized stage, with a single pole in the middle. Municipal code mandates there be a physical barrier six feet from the stage “to keep patrons from attacking people, I guess,” says Bussanich. “We put a bar top on it and seating at it. It’s actually worked really well.”

The strip club can hold 108 people, and Bussanich employs upwards of 50 dancers, with 10 to 15 working over the course of a weekend evening. When there’s not much of a crowd, the dancers supportively cheer and clap for each other, like musicians at a sparsely attended open mic. The encouragements, however, are a little different. “You’re so fucking cute!” yells one dancer. “I fucking love your tits!” says another.

Desire is still clearly a work in progress, and will soon have an adjacent bar operating as a separate business, since state law doesn’t allow alcohol in strip clubs.

Drinking is the least of the concerns for critics of the club, chief amongst them Washington Engage, an Olympia-based advocacy group which seeks to prevent sex and labor trafficking in Washington State and which sought a temporary moratorium on application approvals.

“Strip clubs are a known hotbed for human trafficking,” says Rose Gundersen, the executive director and cofounder. “The truth is that no dancer can make enough money without being forced to go beyond dancing.”

CHASON GORDON

s you drive east on Pacific Avenue through Olympia, Desire slowly emerges from behind an elevated, overgrown grass field. It sits in the middle of a large parking lot in a six-acre plot.

The white blinds are all drawn, and the building is what might be described as hot pink. If you can’t tell that women are taking their clothes off inside, the giant white sign helps.

This is something of an historic site in Washington’s state capital. Though strip clubs have always been technically allowed in Olympia, location restrictions and red tape have long prevented any from opening, leaving residents only with nearby bikini baristas to sate their fleshly desires. But Olympia’s age of innocence is over.

At the beginning of the year, an application from Desire owner Levi Bussanich prompted a review of the Olympia adult entertainment ordinance enacted in 1997, the stated goal of which was “that criminal activity and antisocial activity not protected by the United States Constitution which is typically committed in conjunction with the operation of adult oriented businesses be prevented.” But there was nothing in the ordinance implicitly prohibiting Bussanich from adding a strip club to Desire, his 20-year-old adult video store, since strip clubs and nude dancing are protected forms of free speech.

Bussanich made the move for overt economic reasons. “The Internet has affected the rental and sales business, which has really died off since around 2008,” he says. “People are getting content online and it’s really hard to compete with that.” The move to live entertainment seems like a smart one; Desire is the only strip club for miles around.

Because it’s situated in a giant six-acre plot, Desire easily meets all the distance requirements that keep such establishments away from schools and parks and places of worship. It’s difficult to find many locations in Olympia that meet all such requirements, meaning that Desire will likely be the lone strip club for a while.

Upon entering Desire, one expects a sultry, automated voice to whisper, “desire,” but no such luck. Patrons immediately find themselves at a crossroads of erotic voyeurism. Straight ahead is the video and sex toy store, recently reduced in size to make room for the newly added strip club. Hundreds of videos sit underneath bright fluorescents lights, slightly offset by a five-foot blow-up penis hanging on the wall.

Around the corner is a long line of 20 video booths. Though these booths regularly get about 70 customers a day, they’ve died down significantly since the strip club was added in April.

e’re a little bit closer to getting an NBA team after last week, but probably not for the reason you’d think.

Yes, the Los Angeles Clippers will soon be for sale after owner Donald Sterling was unmasked as one of America’s few remaining segregationists. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help us. The Clippers have a lease that runs through 2024.

And unless Chris Hansen is hiring the team behind the Alaskan Way tunnel project to build his arena, he won’t want to wait that long to bring hoops back to Seattle.

What

BY SETH KOLLOEN does help is how exciting the NBA playoffs have been. A league with this many competitive teams can afford to try expansion—which may be the only way Seattle’s going to get a team.

Five first-round series in the 2014 NBA playoffs went to a full seven games, tying the league record for an entire postseason. Of the 50 first-round games, 26 were decided by two possessions or fewer. The inescapable conclusion? There’s not much difference between the league’s top 16 teams.

Sure, some teams are struggling, but the NBA’s underclass isn’t as permanent as it once was. The

5

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The Final Final Trial of Edward Courtney For 30 years, the man of God molested students he was hired to teach and guide. Over and over he was accused, questioned, transferred, rehabilitated, and accused again.

E

dward Courtney’s cross-country, schoolto-school, boy-to-boy journey lasted more than 30 years and scarred the lives of more victims than he could remember. But by the end of it, if it really ever ended, he still could not bring himself to say the words—sexual abuse—that brought him to a meeting with lawyers on an early-April morning in 2009, or to utter the phrase that numerous allegations have come to define as his true devotion— serial molester.

As former Brother Courtney sat in the law offices on Columbia Tower’s 47th floor on that spring day, the Seattle skyline filling the windows outside Edward Courtney as he mulled over his answers, the best he could come up with was “wrestling.”

“The wrestling, I think, yes, that would be—I remember a couple of occasions of that,” he said in the office filled with attorneys and a court reporter recording Courtney’s deposition. Maybe there was some accidental rubbing-up-against, Courtney would say. And touching. All those years of encounters in classrooms, hallways, gyms, church, and homes—yes, there could have been “inappropriate touching,” he allowed.

After all, Brother Courtney of the Christian Brothers Congregation taught and coached hundreds of Catholic as well as public grade-school boys and middle-school boys and high-school boys from New York City to Chicago to Seattle.

He was in their bathrooms and locker rooms and cloakrooms from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, given his power as teacher and sometimes coach and principal at his Seattle schools— O’Dea High School, St. Alphonsus, Lady of the Lake—and later, despite the church’s knowledge of his serial molesting in their schools, using the Catholics’ recommendations to gain employment at public schools in Tukwila, Parkland, and over in Othello in Adams County, and then on to public schools in Nevada. He worked at no less than 10 schools coast-to-coast, leaving behind more than 50 young victims.

So he touched some. But abuser, rapist, deviant? If that was true, Ed Courtney maintained, wouldn’t he have been sentenced to at least one day in jail or prison? His former students and stacks of court documents may say he abused and assaulted children and teens—that he not only “touched” them every chance he got, but fondled them and ejaculated on them after wrestling them to the ground.

Thing is, the Catholics—the Christian Brothers, the Seattle archdiocese—never touched him.

Never laid a hallowed hand on him. They kept quiet while the children suffered, and even when more children were victimized. And then Chris Courtney, as he liked to be called by the kids, after three decades of teaching and touching, walked away a free man.

So when one of the victims’ Seattle attorneys, Darrell Cochran, asked during the legal deposition that April morning how he would approach a boy—groom a boy—ex-Brother Courtney, a slight, wiry, and balding man in his 70s, sounded

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

But he never truly paid for his sins.

By Rick Anderson

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 7

The Final Final Trial » FROM PAGE 7

defiant.

“Initially, hugging,” he said impatiently, then quickly changed directions. He wanted to talk about what some of the kids, now grown men, had claimed he’d done to them years ago, holding them down as he rubbed himself to pleasure.

“I see some of these have alleged more serious abuse, like sadistic things, which I absolutely deny,” he said, studying documents handed to him. “That’s not who I am or was.” There were times, he said, when “some misplaced sense of intimacy would cause an arousal on my part.” But “when they’re talking about something going way beyond that, that I would deny.”

Courtney was offended when shown a Christian Brothers letter implying he might have been homosexual. This was, he said, “the first time I have seen [this] in writing as far as homosexual activities with young men. I don’t know that that should be there in any way. I don’t think that—I don’t know where that came from.” Maybe he was convicted of indecent liberties, he allowed.

But a homosexual? “Somebody has added that, and I don’t think it should be in there.”

He had other complaints. “In other cases they said ‘buttocks’ and that—I deny that because I don’t recall that at all”—doing something to or on or in the buttocks of children and teens— “and I remember in somebody else’s testimony there was some things that I think, like that, that clearly did not happen.

“I was not—I don’t know how to say this— very sexually aware at that time. I think I might have said that in other testimony. I was sexually ‘knowledgeable,’ let me say,” Courtney explained, but not to the extent that he knew how to engage in “anything anal or oral or something like that. It seems now in 2009 that was inconceivable, but remember this was 30 years ago and in some cases 40 years ago, and fairly protected.”

of students at its Seattle schools. Says Seattle attorney Michael Pfau, who represents many of the victims, “It is a tentative settlement at this point, and we don’t know the exact numbers of clients involved. There are still negotiations taking place.” The settlement could happen within days. The Seattle Archdiocese, under Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, was asked to comment, and responded in an e-mail asking “What kind of story are you working on?” When told, it chose not to answer any questions or discuss the pending settlement.

Recently, Pope Francis took personal responsibility for the harm done to sexually abused children in past decades and pledged to impose new sanctions on offenders. But critics felt the church was still avoiding full responsibility for the systemic child rape it fostered. “Until he takes some actions,” said Barbara Dorris of SNAP— the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests—“it’s hard to believe that his request for forgiveness is serious.” The Seattle Archdiocese owns O’Dea and owns and operates St. Alphonsus. The Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order headquartered in Rome that has owned or operated schools in the United States since the early 1900s, operates O’Dea in conjunction with the archdiocese and once ran a now-defunct boarding school and orphanage in Kent called Briscoe Memorial—also the subject of numerous lawsuits involving both the order and the archdiocese.

The Christian Brothers declared bankruptcy in 2011 due to the crush of sex-abuse suits. Last May, the order reached a $16.5 million agreement to pay 400 former students who claimed they had been abused at schools across the U.S., including O’Dea and Briscoe. Pfau’s law partner, Jason Amala, who represents more than 80 local and national abuse survivors in the bankruptcy, says the order had denied any wrongdoing, but the settlement “acknowledges their role in decades of children being sexual abused.” In recent years, he and Pfau have settled more than

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

It was an odd way to end his denial. Protected. Socially

8

protected? Sexually protected?

Well, church protected, for sure.

But soon the church will be announcing an updated figure on how much the protection of Ed Courtney, now 78 years old, has cost.

The Seattle Archdiocese has already paid out more than $50 million in recent years to settle sex-assault lawsuits brought by more than 200 former students.

But most were cases brought against priests. Courtney was a teacher and school official under supervision of his Catholic order and later the archdiocese, under the supervision of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, and his nationwide serial molestations have slipped under the public radar. They are being fully detailed here for the first time.

Courtney has already cost the Christian Brothers and the archdiocese millions in settlements. Now the archdiocese is poised to make another multimillion-dollar payout over Courtney’s molestation

A letter from Pastor Jeffrey Sarkies confirming Edward Courtney’s resignation from St. Alphonsus.

ArT. COMMUniTy. CeLebrATiOn.

May 16 - May 18, 2014

Join Chihuly Garden and Glass on our second anniversary as we celebrate the arts in our community. Featured programming will highlight local artists and organizations, with a Friday night party benefiting seattle cultural organizations.

AnniversAry bAsh Friday, May 16, 2014 7 - 10 PM

Tickets on sale now Join us in the Glasshouse for light appetizers, tastings of the new billy O Wines, music, a no-host bar and a self-guided tour through the exhibition and Garden.

C h i h U Ly g a r d e n a n d g l a s s . CO M / A n n i v e r s A ry

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

Courtney’s victims was $1.1 million to a Skagit County man who said he was abused at age 13 by Courtney in 1980 when the accused was principal at St. Alphonsus. Another $1.9 million was paid to five men who say Courtney abused them when he taught and coached them at O’Dea in the 1970s.

Among the lawsuits still pending in King County Superior Court is one filed last year by a man who says Courtney sexually abused him in O’Dea’s gymnasium in 1975 and a second time, in 1988, at Courtney’s mother’s house in Burien.

Courtney later received the deed to that home on South 187th Street.

The house was sold by him last year for $138,000, according to county property records. He signed sales papers before a notary in Hawaii, where he is now listed as a resident of Honolulu. Seattle Weekly left messages at a phone number listed in his name, but received no response. His former Seattle attorney, John Bergmann, would not provide any current information on Courtney’s whereabouts, and says that “He did The transcript of Courtney’s deposition, top; and minutes of a express regret” for his 1974 Christian Brothers council meeting, above. past in a statement Bergmann was authorized to issue, but had no further comment.

50 claims for more than $25 million against the In his 2009 deposition, obtained by the Weekly, Brothers and the Seattle Archdiocese, involving Courtney also expresses some regrets. He said priests and brothers. he was repeatedly counseled and spent time at Though not widely known, Courtney’s serial a church retreat for sexual offenders. “We had molestations were likely the single most costly workshops and things like that,” he said. “I know aspect of the Christian Brothers U.S. bankruptcy one time we all visited an AA meeting, another settlement last year, because the order shuffled time it was yoga. There was dream therapy, too.” him from school to school and hid his past.

One doctor even tried to hypnotize him in an Fifty-two of the 400 Christian Brothers claimattempt to curtail his sexual attacks. ants named Courtney as their abuser, according But nothing, it seemed, could stop Brother to Pfau—15 of them from the Seattle area.

Edward from his life of devotion, in this case, to The Christian Brothers and the archdiocese the abuse of students in his trust. And those who remain co-defendants in numerous local cases resulting from Courtney’s actions. Six men in one could have stopped him helped him instead. lawsuit, for example, have accused the Brothers and archdiocese of having a role in their alleged Edward Courtney was raised a good Catholic sexual abuse by Courtney at both parochial and in Seattle archdiocesan schools. At the age of 22, public schools. Two say they were abused in the he moved to New York and was admitted to the 1970s while students at O’Dea; three say they congregation of Christian Brothers of Ireland were abused when they were at St. Alphonsus in where, in 1957, he took his vows and began 1979; and one says he was abused at age 13 at a training. His first permanent assignment was public school in Othello, when Courtney was his at New York City’s Sacred Heart School, from baseball coach.

1957 to 1960, teaching elementary and eighth Among the settlements already paid out to » CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

9

The Final Final Trial

» FROM PAGE 9

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graders. According to Christian Brothers records, he almost immediately began to prey on young boys. The order’s solution—one that would be repeated for three decades—was to move him to another school, much as the Catholic Church at the time shuffled predatory priests from parish to parish.

In 1960, the Provincial Council of the Christian Brothers transferred Courtney from Sacred Heart to Brother Rice High School in Chicago.

At Brother Rice, problems quickly arose with Courtney’s “homosexuality,” as a council letter in court files described his “problem.” Though he rose to assistant principal there, he was known by other school officials to be a molester, and, after 1968, was shifted to St. Laurence High School in Burbank, Illinois, where he continued to abuse students. He then repeated the offense after he was transferred to Brother Rice High in Birmingham, Michigan, where he was dean of students. One Christian Brothers official described Courtney as “a bit confused. Let’s hope a change of atmosphere will help him mentally.” The allegations of abuse continued. He was sent back to St. Leo High in Chicago, where in 1970 he also abused students and had to be transferred once more—back to St. Laurence, where the unchecked abuse continued.

The order’s ruling Provincial Council then quietly withdrew him from teaching and sent him off for counseling, never informing authorities that he had by then been accused of molesting students at five different schools. Students and parents were none the wiser, and Courtney continued to be portrayed as a popular teacher

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SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

He arrived in Seattle in the fall of ’74, the year Brother John McGraw was appointed O’Dea’s principal and a year before Ray Hunthausen would take over for Seattle Archbishop Thomas

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10

and coach at St. Laurence. But by the following January, he had quietly become such an habitual abuser that he was given two days notice to leave St. Laurence. As Courtney would later admit in his Seattle deposition, “After breakfast, Brother Manning, who was the principal, called me in to talk, and he said there had been complaints and basically told me I was going to have to leave at that time.” He also offered Courtney a solution to his problem: get a job and get married.

Courtney did get a job—he worked at a travel agency—but he remained a Brother. The ruling council, in a memo, barred him from returning to the local schools: “Chris is to have no contact with Rice, Leo, or Laurence in any way, shape, or form.” But he could remain in the fold if he got lost. In August 1974, the council transferred him to Seattle.

The precise number of victims he left behind in the Midwest is unclear. But last year’s $16.5 million bankruptcy settlement went in part to more than 80 alumni of the Chicago-area schools who claimed they were abused by Courtney and 11 other teachers. Thirty-one other men, not part of that settlement, filed a separate suit last year alleging that they too were violated at the Chicago schools—16 of them claiming abuse

by Courtney.

Brother Courtney, according to provincial records, “was accepted at O’Dea after an incident at St. Laurence with a freshman boy led to his being withdrawn from the school for the remainder of the year.” In his deposition, Courtney recalled being told that O’Dea was his “final trial.”

T OR

H

Connelly. After Christian Brothers officials alerted McGraw to the problem he was inheriting—at one point using the word “pedophile” to describe Courtney—McGraw, in a response, tried to imagine how he could deal with the newcomer. “I could use Chris to help with school finance work, work with the alumni, help with the gym planning perhaps, etc.,” he wrote. “But I don’t know if I could keep him busy enough and I wonder if with a lot of free time in a small place if he might get up tight just looking for things to do. . . . And would he understand and agree to the conditions which would be set up and I guess governed by me?”

This defensive strategy included giving him assignments that would keep him away from students—difficult to do for someone working at a school. The attempted diversion quickly failed.

Records show that two months after he started at O’Dea, Courtney was in the locker room, coaching intramural basketball, with 75 students participating. And he was molesting again. One record notes he “did have a problem with a couple boys the first year,” and was seen on one occasion carrying a youth into a private residence used by the Brothers.

School officials told Courtney he needed more counseling, and he was sent to see his third therapist in recent years. At the same time, the order was backing Courtney’s efforts to obtain a Washington teaching certificate: The same Midwest principal who had tossed him out of St. Laurence wrote to the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia that Courtney had “served very efficiently as full time teacher of English and history” in Illinois and “I recommend him highly.”

Courtney had also sought to become a recruiter at Seattle grade schools, hoping to persuade students to attend O’Dea. However, his

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reputation, it seemed, had preceded him. According to the minutes from a November 1974 Provincial Council meeting, “The Council was opposed 5-0 to letting Chris Courtney do the recruiting at O’Dea since the grade school students in Seattle are probably already aware of the situation [likely due to rumors]. The Consultors did not wish to make a final decision concerning Chris’ case until they had talked with [O’Dea school official] John Reilly. After the talk with John it was agreed that the next incident would be the last.”

Though school officials were required to report the accusations to the state, they did not. When asked why they didn’t, officials said they couldn’t remember.

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

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Courtney now faced his final final trial. But he wasn’t slowing down. According to a lawsuit filed by one of Amala and Pfau’s clients under the name J.B., Courtney molested and assaulted him that fall. The then-teen complained to the school principal that Courtney “was humping me.” In response he was told that Courtney was “just really friendly.” J.B. said Courtney’s humping and groping became more violent. The victim refused to go to a Saturday detention class where he was sure Courtney would attack him again. The student was then expelled from school.

In a court statement, former O’Dea vice principal Frank LaFazia said he heard that the teen “was one of the kids that Ed Courtney bothered, as we say.” LaFazia also said he had a secret meeting with the school principal and the Brother Superior after a student’s older brother complained Courtney had inappropriately touched him, and that the other two officials promised to deal with it—but apparently didn’t.

In 1975, Courtney was back at O’Dea as part of the faculty overseen by the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese, this time serving as a financial administrator and English teacher.

According to records of a court claim by another plaintiff and ex-O’Dea student using the initials D.C., Courtney ordered the youth to stay after school one day in January 1976 for chewing gum in class. Leading him to another classroom and then locking the door, Courtney pushed the boy to the floor, mounted him, and rubbed himself on the boy, fully clothed, penis to penis, for almost 20 minutes before he climaxed.

The boy later told a neighbor, who told the boy’s father, who then went to O’Dea and confronted the principal, Brother McGraw, who consulted with the Provincial Counsel. A provincial official’s memo at the time assessed the situation: “Br. Courtney was and is just now a constant source of anxiety for any Principal.

Because he is school Bursar he holds a key position and his loss could be a severe blow to the Principal. At the same time [Brother McGraw] cannot ignore complaints coming to his office.

At the moment he has asked me to let him deal with this matter until the extent of the trouble is clarified and he is in a position to report to the Provincial.”

McGraw and other officials decided Courtney should make an apology to the O’Dea community. According to an official’s memo, “If the community accepts his apology, he may remain at his post in the school until June. If they do

not accept the apology, then John Reilly should get in touch with me. He [Courtney] would be advised then to stay with his mother until June when we would consider the case at another Council Meeting.”

Court records indicate Courtney refused to make a public apology. In April 1979, the order’s council sent him to a retreat, the Southdown Institute in Canada, for three months of sexualdeviancy treatment. Courtney, in his deposition, confirmed that the council sent him to Canada for “inappropriately touching” students.

Yet, having failed his final final trial, he was still in the fold. And there was a cover story, if needed. The order’s newsletter reported that “Brother Chris Courtney left here yesterday for an indefinite period to take a much-needed rest at a place called Southdown Institute, Toronto, Canada. We hope to see him back ‘home’ again in good condition to face the next scholastic year, 1976–1977.”

See him they did. Courtney returned to O’Dea that fall as an English teacher. He would later say during the deposition that he returned a changed man. He went into his assignment “feeling that it would be successful and there were no ulterior motives,” he said. But he apparently quickly relapsed. Records show that two months later, he was sent back to Southdown for another week of deviancy diversion. He returned, and the abuse reports began again. Among them, according to court statements, was an attack on student M.B., whom Courtney invited to play handball at Seattle University. Afterward, Courtney took the teen to Courtney’s mother’s home in Burien, claiming he had to deliver groceries to her. At the home, M.B. says, the stronger Courtney wrestled him to the floor and then ground his penis on M.B. until he ejaculated.

Courtney went on to teach summer school in 1977 and returned for the fall quarter. Christian Brothers records show that in the spring of 1978, “there was another confrontation of parents with [the] Principal telling of three incidents during the year when their son had been abused.”

Once again, the Provincial Council rolled into semi-action. Some officials said he should be sent off to Southdown again, but others felt “it would not be fair to the Canadian Province to have them take on one of our problems,” according to meeting minutes. The council ended up relieving him of teaching duties and assigning him to house maintenance at Cody Hall, a training area for the Brothers. He also was to have periodic therapy sessions.

Though school officials were required to report the accusations against Courtney to the state, they did not. When asked during their depositions why they didn’t follow the mandatory rules, officials said they couldn’t remember, but thought it would have been up to the Provincial Council to inform Olympia.

A 1978 letter from the head of the council indicates that the order had reached a breaking point over what the official called Courtney’s “problem with homosexuality,” which seemed “to have surfaced more than ever within the past five years or so.” Maybe it was time for Courtney to go, the two-page letter states. “I do not believe he should be teaching at all and that he would be much better off physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually anywhere except in a teaching Congregation.”

Says attorney Amala, “This ended Courtney’s teaching days at O’Dea. But sadly for others, it was not the end of his teaching career or his career as an unreported sexual predator.” To his credit, Courtney admits he sexually abused

11

The Final Final Trial » FROM PAGE 11

multiple students at O’Dea, Amala adds. But at that time, and for years to follow, the Christian Brothers kept it secret, as would the archdiocese.

In 1978, Courtney took a leave from the Christian Brothers, called exclaustration; he remained a Brother but lived apart from the community.

That year, the order paid Courtney’s way at Seattle University to earn accreditation as a school principal. Officials also wrote letters of recommendation on his behalf. One stated that “Students respond well to his personality and motivation”; another said, “He maintained good

order in his classes without being harsh and rigid.” Principal McGraw wrote, “I believe Mr. Courtney would be an excellent addition to any school’s administration.”

The next school year, Courtney performed duties as assistant to the principal at Our Lady of the Lake elementary school, a private Catholic school in Wedgwood where classes are overseen by the Seattle Archdiocese’s Office of Education. No abuse incidents were reported during his stay there.

The following year, 1979, he was selected as principal of St. Alphonsus Parish School in Ballard.

A welcoming letter to Courtney on behalf of the archdiocese’s Office of Education, cited in court files, says that as “a teacher in our schools during the past years we certainly feel at home with you.”

The archdiocese claims in court papers that it was unaware of Courtney’s long history as a

pedophile, insisting the Christian Brothers never fully revealed his past. In a subsequent review of Courtney’s case, the archdiocese concluded that “the Catholic School Office was not made aware of . . . any reasons for not employing him in any of the Archdiocesan schools.” In a deposition, St. Alphonsus Pastor Jeff Sarkies said that after Courtney was hired, Sarkies heard concerned talk that Courtney was “bonding” with young students at the parish school. When he called O’Dea to ask about the new principal, he was told not to worry, he said.

Not long after Courtney began his duties at St. Alphonsus, he was visited by Brother John McGowan, the head of the regional Christian Brothers province. He had been advising Courtney for years and was well aware of his history, as were officials at the Rome headquarters. He

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sent Courtney a follow-up letter about the visit, stressing Rome’s, and God’s, oversight of his life.

“I would say that you seem to be doing very well at the present time as Principal of that elementary school that we visited,” McGowan wrote.

“If I were you, I would stick with that until He should point out to you that He has another direction for your life. Whether in or out, Chris, you know that you can always count on the many friends you have made in the Congregation over the years, not the least of which is the [Rome] Superior General himself.”

Then came the unsurprising claims from St. Alphonsus students that Courtney had molested them. One said he’d gotten into trouble stealing candy, and that when Courtney confronted him, he began to touch him sexually. When Courtney learned from the boy that his brother had been involved, the principal later had the brother brought to his office and sexually touched him as well.

Father Sarkies contacted O’Dea again, he says, and this time was told about Courtney’s past.

Sarkies said he confronted Courtney, who admitted the youths’ charges and agreed to resign.

Courtney then balked, withdrawing his resignation. “I have assessed the climate during the past week and I do not feel that my remaining would be a source of further embarrassment to me or to others,” he said in a letter. “This assessment includes the attitude I’ve witnessed from among the students including the sixth graders. The situation [talk of his abuse] apparently has not been spread any further and would, I believe, not likely be believed by others anyway.” He added that he thought the abuse charges were exaggerated and promised Sarkies that “this misconduct will not reappear.”

Sarkies, consulting with other church leaders, decided to force the resignation, but to do so quietly and “with reluctance,” he said in a letter to Courtney. “Ed,” Sarkies wrote, “it is important that you understand the reason we were able to keep the matter that led to your submitting a letter of resignation quiet was because the parents concerned, who also admired your abilities, were assured that since there were only two weeks left of the school year, you would be allowed to finish the year as usual. But they were also assured that you would then terminate which was in keeping with the agreement we reached in the discussion we had with Mr. Pat Crowley, the Archdiocesan Attorney.”

Sarkies and the archdiocese therein joined the Christian Brothers in covering up Courtney’s transgressions. “At the same time it is clear to me,” the pastor wrote, “that if you were to follow the original cause of action you would thereby be allowed to save face and leave the area with the respect and admiration of the majority of the St. Alphonsus School people. To alter that course would be to run the very real risk of turning this situation into a cause célèbre thereby doing damage to your name and reputation and that of the school.”

Courtney went quietly. Like the Christian Brothers, the archdiocese did not report his abuse to Olympia. He was thus able to retain his teaching credentials and hide his past. The following year, he moved to the public-school system, teaching part-time at Foster High in Tukwila, apparently without any reported incidents. He then taught two years at an elementary school in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb. According to Courtney’s own statements, he re-offended at Parkland.

In his deposition, he admits to two offenses— one of which parents complained, and “I believe there was another one,” he said. What did he do to the students? “Same type of situation as any of

the others basically,” he said. How true: Parents complained, officials huddled, and he was quietly shuffled off, again without a report sent to Olympia. The grade school was closing, and the district was going through a reduction in force, Courtney said, so “I wouldn’t be back even if something opened up somewhere else in the district.”

His public record still clear, in 1982 Ed Courtney, 47, took a teaching position at a grade school in Othello, later teaching and coaching seventh graders at the local junior high. As he began work in Othello, he finally cut his ties with Christian Brothers, officially leaving the order.

James Jungers, then the superintendent of Othello schools, would later say he had no clue about Courtney’s background; he’d arrived with glowing recommendations and a valid teaching certificate, Jungers said in a court deposition. In 1986, however, Jungers began to learn differently after parents complained their son had been molested by Courtney, who was also a coach at the school. Courtney often wrestled him and other youths to the ground in a way that seemed like the coach was “getting his jollies,” the boy told police. Courtney told investigators the kids just misunderstood. “It’s a lot more along the lines of horseplay,” he claimed in a recorded interview with

A psychologist noted that there “may have been other allegations and documentation of pedophilic behavior. . . . Apparently, no one has looked into this.”

mother “was happy to see me,” even though she called police. “I didn’t realize, like I do now,” he said, “that the line was crossed.”

A psychologist who interviewed Courtney in Othello for a pre-sentencing report noted in the court record that there “may have been other allegations and documentation of pedophilic behavior during prior teaching positions. Apparently, no one has looked into this.” And apparently no one did. Treated as a first offender, Courtney was given 24 months’ probation and had to register as a sexual offender for one year. He also agreed to surrender his state teaching certificate. But he did not spend a day in jail.

Courtney is not known to have taught anywhere since, and is thought to be retired and living in Hawaii on a pension and the proceeds of the sale of his Burien home.

In 2009, giving his deposition in the Seattle law offices, Courtney seemed to think he’d done nothing too wrong in his life beyond “improperly touching” some students he was there to educate and prepare for life ahead. He was young when most of this happened, he said, and “I guess that’s maybe why I didn’t realize that these things bothered others as much. I don’t know.

“I’m trying to put my own mind back there too, and it’s not that easy to do. Now I look at it and see how the line is right there, just don’t even go close to the line, let alone cross it. But again, we’re looking at 2009. Not to excuse anything, but it’s just a fact of where we’re at.”

It was part of Courtney’s final statement for the record, his answer to a life of final finals that never were. E

randerson@seattleweekly.com

May 7-13, 2014

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officers, “and that has always been my style.”

Unlike school officials in Courtney’s past, Jungers immediately placed Courtney on administrative leave and barred him from the classroom; Courtney then returned to Seattle. Police learned more details from one of at least three victims, who recounted the more than a halfdozen occasions that his teacher had cornered him, fondled him, and rubbed against him with an erection, asking the boy excitedly, “Do you feel it?”

Aware prosecutors were going to charge him, Courtney quietly relocated to Nevada. He didn’t exactly lay low, however. Within a year he had become a substitute teacher in the Reno area.

The local school district had done a routine preemployment check, but did not turn up the outstanding warrant for his arrest. As it turned out, Nevada police were alerted to his presence by the mother of one of Courtney’s former Othello students—the family had moved to the Reno area (and later suspected Courtney may even have followed them there to further pursue their son; Courtney was spotted at one of the boy’s football games). He was extradited back to Washington in 1988 to face charges.

In 1989—the first time he’d been accused of a sex crime after almost 30 years of abusing students—Courtney was allowed to plead guilty to one of two counts of indecent liberties. In his 2009 deposition, Courtney provided some of the details of his acts, describing how he began touching one of the boys, a member of the junior-high baseball team: “That actually was what started the whole thing, and it was—yes, I would say at this time now, that it was obviously inappropriate. I didn’t think of it along those lines at the time. . . . I remember it was in

the coaches’ complex there, and he [his victim] was leaning back, and I was going like this, and that’s when—I was rubbing up against him, as it turned out, and I think, again, that was not intent or anything—that was not my goal or objective, but that’s what happened, and it caused me some embarrassment at that point.” He’d also admitted abuse earlier while teaching at one of the local grade schools, but blamed the student. “I remember that he was under the desk, and don’t ask me—I am not sure what—if he was clowning around or whatever, but at first I thought it was an accident, and the second time, he actually touched me inappropriately.”

He befriended the boy, and their relationship endured over the years, he indicated. It was the same boy whose family moved to Nevada, and whose game Courtney attended. He claimed the

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food&drink

What Restaurant Staffs Eat For these three chefs, feeding employees well is business as usual.

BY NICOLE SPRINKLE

W

thing, it’s going to be pretty popular.

Also, one of the other cooks and I will do a seafood soup with white wine and fish scraps,” which Ritchie says allows them to use up leftovers. “Following a big holiday, we have a really doggone good meal.”

He even gives the servers a chance to cook: to try The Tilth crew breaks bread something they’ve before a busy night. made at home, for instance. Selfishly, Like Whisenhunt, Doak has worked in he admits, the family meal also prevents him her share of restaurants where either no meal from having to cook for waiters who order from was offered to staff, or it was too vile to eat. the bar. Though Ritchie says not every Ethan “Even if the restaurants just took some of their Stowell restaurant does a staff meal, he’s insistent scraps . . . it’s not as difficult as it seems,” she says. on keeping one at mkt.

MORGEN SCHULER

Hearing about these family meals made me

At Tilth in Fremont, the family meal takes place before dinner service, which makes it more of a rush, but no less appreciated.

“We love family meal. It’s a morale-booster for everyone before service, and our cooks take a lot of pride in it,” says executive chef Jason Brzozowy. “It’s a way for them to show off their skills and creativity.”

He says the cooks typically prepare comfort food, like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, tacos, or some sort of spicy pork with veggies and rice.

What never changes: a bottle of Sriracha or sambal oelek on hand.

Tilth also has some traditions. Once a month on “new menu day,” one server will cook the family meal since the kitchen is extra-busy making all the soon-to-premiere dishes for the staff to try. “And if a server or cook is leaving us, we make whatever they want for their ‘last meal’ as a way to show our gratitude for their hard work.”

Asked about hands-down favorite meals among the staff, Brzozowy immediately throws out the “ultimate baked-potato bar” and the “ultimate taco bar.” What makes them “ultimate?” Anything and everything: leftover scrap proteins like pork belly, goat, hangar steak, and duck; brunch leftovers such as sous vide eggs and smoked chicken gravy; and more typical toppings like crème fraiche, shaved onions, and chives. And, of course, the Sriracha.

And then there’s the meal Brzozowy calls a blessing and a curse, “death fries” —basically just an over-the-top version of poutine, which is already over the top. “The staff loves it until we have to work through a busy night’s service when, really, a nap would be more in order.” E

nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com

Ballard will welcome “farm-to-neighborhood” restaurant Brunswick & Hunt on May 22 with dinner service starting at 4 p.m. The Northwest 70th Street restaurant will have Chef Jeffrey Davidson at the helm, serving up locally-sourced mostly-meat dishes. Lead Bartender Eric Holmquist will mix high quality cocktails and pour from eight rotating taps and a Northwestfocused wine list.

Exciting news for Bellevue: The massive Tavern Hall is set to open by July 15. The restaurant will sprawl across 9,500 square feet and will feature shuffleboard, pub fare, and 20 beers on draft.

The project is a collaboration of Marc and Bret Chatalas of Cactus, and James Weimann and Deming Maclise of Stoneburner, Von Trapp’s, Bastille, Macleod’s, and Poquitos.

First-time restaurateur Javier Dalzell is opening Sur 16 on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue in the former Bagel Deli space. The menu will utilize local ingredients and Pacific Northwest seafood in Spanish-Mexican cuisine. Dalzell hopes to open in August.

Laila Ghambari, director of coffee at Cherry Street Coffee House, is bringing home the 2014 United States Coffee Champion award. Ghambari slayed the competition by almost 50 points and will next compete in Italy for the 2014 World Barista Championship in June.E

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The WeeklyDish

Oyster Benedict

BY NICOLE SPRINKLE Brunch at Roux (4201 Fremont Ave. N.) seemed like the right place to begin a rainy Saturday last weekend. While the rabbit hash enticed, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for fried oysters. Not just any fried oysters—but three zaftig ones in a not-at-all greasy breading, which they burst through in brackish glory. (A fried oyster that actually tastes like the sea instead of cornmeal is a rare treat.)

Then take that perfect incarnation and place it atop a subtly sweet griddle cake. Crown it with two eggs Benedict, of which the hollandaise is kicked up with more tang than usual, and you’ve got a breakfast that’ll blow away your taste buds.

The sweet-briny-piquant dish manages to be both complex and hearty. It was so satisfying that I wasn’t even tempted to touch the side of potatoes.E

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

curious as to how other restaurants handle them (not all serve them), so I nosed around for other stories. These meals don’t need to cost all that much, and, according to the chefs interviewed here, they bring much-needed sustenance and camaraderie while providing an opportunity to try out new dishes.

Over at mkt., Ethan Stowell’s newish Tangletown restaurant, executive chef Joe Ritchie feels strongly about the staff meal, which is served at the end of the night, when the last diners are sometimes lingering at 10 or 11 p.m and when everyone can take a breather, and not just gulp down their food. “It’s a way to unwind and let out any tension that’s arisen,” he says. “It’s a fastpaced, high-friction environment, and people can rub each other the wrong way.” But when everyone sits down together with a meal and a glass of wine, it’s a nice way to unwind. “As professionals in the industry, we spend our whole day cooking and serving people. We shouldn’t just be slaves of the trade, but have some quality of life. It’s a nice perk for all the kitchen staff too.”

But Ritchie also looks at the time as an opportunity. “It’s not just some halfhearted attempt to feed people. I try to make it representative of us as cooks, to put some effort into it.” To that end, on Saturday nights they do paella, Wednesdays and Thursdays some kind of soup. It’s usually not the same style of food they put on the menu, but more ethnic in nature. “We don’t blow the budget, but we make things that people want to eat.

Mexican food is always popular. Everybody loves that. Breakfast for dinner, pancakes and eggs, are a hit too.

“As a cook you learn that if you deep-fry any-

BY MEGAN HILL

NICOLE SPRINKLE

hen I reviewed Brimmer & Heeltap in Ballard a few months back, I noticed something on their “Late Night” menu (available 10 p.m.– close) called “Our Family Meal.” It was described as “eat what we eat, price and preparation change daily.”

Bascially, Brimmer & Heeltap had taken an industry routine—serving staff a meal before or after their work shifts—and made it more interesting. The food had to not just fill the bellies of their workers, but impress guests to boot.

Chef Mike Whisenhunt, who’s cooked at Joule and Revel, explains the idea: “I’ve come from many a restaurant that have little to no family meals, or it’s been disgraceful when we’ve had it. How can I expect our cooks to make great food when they’re not eating it? My goal is that we’re cooking food for customers that we’d serve ourselves.”

It also points to the desire to add value to jobs that don’t pay high wages: “I want to take care of my team as best I can. Everyone is worth so much more than what I can give them financially.”

Considering the staff meals will be on the menu later, you might assume that Whisenhunt makes his staff plan them and meet his approval, but not so: “I don’t think any of my cooks are green enough to put out something that you wouldn’t serve customers.” So far there have been no disasters. His only requirement: “It needs to be sustainable. I can’t get through a night on biscuits and gravy. If there’s fat in it, it needs something to balance that.”

No “gut bombs,” proprietor Jen Doak adds.

Nonetheless, she says, it does raise the bar for cooks, who get a chance to conceive and prepare a meal for diners, and levels the playing field. So what’s been on the menu?

For a time they were doing ramen nights, which gained a bit of a cult following—though with the warm weather, they’ve been phased out.

One cook makes tortillas from scratch, another likes to do street food like pupusas, a Salvadoran stuffed flat bread. They’ve also had grilled cheese sandwiches with smoked tomato soup, Vietnamese-inspired chicken soup, cabbage rolls, and burgers made out of chuck-steak scraps (a great way to utilize leftovers). The family meals have taken some time to catch on with diners, but some nights have seen a full house at 11 p.m.

Finances certainly play into the decision to provide a family meal—or not. Doak estimates that on average, raw food costs alone are $2 a person a night for their staff of 15. With restaurants’ tight margins, she says it does impact their financials, but “we [she and Whisenhunt] have to come in and look our team in the face every day.”

FoodNews

15

food&drink» Bring on the Summery Brews

L

206-397-3564 818 East Pike Street, Seattle, Wa 98122

4pm-2am Daily

MOTHER’S DAY

ast week I wrote about IPAs. Negatively. As I suspected, I touched a raw nerve in the local beer community: The IPA culture here is deeply ingrained. Since I can’t resist poking at that nerve, here are a few more thoughts.

First and foremost, I want to state this unequivocally: If you like IPAs, awesome. You are surrounded by a vast and growing array of choices and a local beer industry committed to catering to your tastes. I don’t quite understand the defensiveness: IPAs aren’t exactly a niche product that I’m trying to exterminate. My point was that they’re a disproBY ZACH GEBALLE portionately large component of the beer culture in and around Seattle, and that for those of us who don’t love hoppy beer, a redistribution of tap handles and shelf space would be welcome.

Let’s not forget, though, that IPAs arose because shipping British beer to India required the addition of extra hops (a powerful natural preservative). Much like the tannins in wine, that flavor, first sought to protect the drink from travel and aging, came to define the style—and, also like tannin, when overdone, other subtleties and flavors are obliterated by a wave of astringency.

And I’ll skip over the calories in IPAs. Just realize that it’s probably a whole lot more than you’d like to think when you’re reaching for that third pint.

I mean, I get it. IPAs and other hoppy beers gained popularity in part because they were so dramatically different from most of the beer available in the U.S. Certainly they’re light years away from Budweiser or Miller Lite, and as such, drinking richer, hoppier beers was about making a statement. Yet if there was ever a time to put the IPAs down and give lighter (craft) beers a try, it would be spring and summer.

Pilsners, lagers, and blonde ales suffered most in the backlash against industrial breweries, since those were the styles that Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, and others employed in a literally watered-down fashion. Yet they remain ideal warm-weather beers, light, crisp, and refreshing. Their relatively low levels of malt and hops keep them from filling you up, and they’re usually brewed to 4.5 to 5 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). Georgetown’s “Roger’s” pilsner; the Old Seattle Lager from Maritime Pacific; Naked City’s “Blonde on Blonde”: All are perfect for the porch, and won’t overwhelm your palate as a heavier IPA will.

For the slightly more daring, the world of saisons and wheat beers offers plenty of the depth of flavor and complexity of many IPAs without the corresponding hoppiness. The spiced, fruity aromatics of Boundary Bay’s Saison and the tropical notes throughout Stoup’s Weissbier taste inescapably of summertime.

And you know what? There are worse things to do than sit on the lawn or the beach with a bottle of relatively cheap lager and just enjoy the damn sunshine. Save the IPAs for gray days: There are plenty of them, after all. E

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SEATTLE WEEKLY’S

Chefs Share Desserts Their Mamas Made

W

SIFF Preview Guide On Stands 5/14!

ith Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, we asked three local chefs to share favorite sweets that their moms made for them growing up, recipe included—just in case you’re looking for a homemade gift for your own mother that’s steeped in nostalgia and vetted by pros. NICOLE SPRINKLE

To advertise contact us at: advertising@seattleweekly.com or 206.467.4341

The Jiggly Dessert

“My parents weren’t much of dessert people, but whenever we had guests over for dinner my mom made what my brothers and I called the “jiggly dessert.” We loved it! It was a frozen sour cream panna cotta that she made in a bronze fruit basket mold. She’d pull it out of the freezer and serve it with cranberry compote. Kind of a perfect 1970s dessert!”

—Ethan Stowell, restaurateur Ingredients: 3 cups heavy cream, 1 cup sour

cream, 1 cup sugar, 1 vanilla bean split and scraped, ½ cup Grand Marnier, 4 sheets gelatin softened in cold water Directions: Bring the cream, sour cream, vanilla bean, 1 cup Grand Marnier, and sugar to a boil and then immediately turn off. Add gelatin to the mixture and whisk until all ingredients are thoroughly combined, about a minute or two.

Strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer and place in the copper fruit basket mold of your choice. Chill until set, preferably overnight. Serve with your favorite fruit compote.

Raspberry Freezer Jelly

“My mom has been making this freezer jelly for as long as I can remember and she learned from her grandmother. She takes so much care to remove every seed, making this jelly perfectly clear. The simplicity of ingredients and the lack of cooking make it the brightest flavored fruit jelly I have ever tasted. Growing up, our favorite use for this jelly was inside a crepe topped with powdered sugar, the butter and jelly dripping out the ends!” — Autumn Martin, owner of Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery

Ingredients: 2 cups crushed raspberries, 4 cups

Candy Boyer’s Cookie & Sam’s Double Vanilla Chip Ice Cream “My mom couldn’t cook much at all: think pork chops turned to hockey pucks. But she did make great chocolate chip cookies. She would change some of the measurements of a standard Tollhouse recipe and sub some of the flour with oatmeal, all of which would create a more cakey cookie that was a little different than standard.

One day my dad made homemade vanilla bean ice cream and I snuck into the freezer (even though he told me not to) and wedged in there were ice cream sandwiches with my mom’s cookies and my dad’s ice cream: my first real ice cream sandwich! These inspired the ones that I put on LloydMartin’s menu in the summer.” — Sam Crannell, chef/owner of LloydMartin Cookie Ingredients: 3 cups all purpose flour, 1

tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. salt, 2 softened sticks of butter (not melted, room temp), 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup light brown sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, 2 large eggs, 2 cups of Ghirardelli 60 percent chocolate chips, approximately 2 cups of ground up oatmeal Directions: Put flour, salt, and baking soda in one bowl. Put ground oatmeal alone in a bowl.

Beat softened butter, eggs, and vanilla till creamy.

Slowly add bowl of flour, baking soda, and salt.

Add chocolate chips. While mixing, add the ground oatmeal until the dough gets tacky and barely sticks to fingers. Put into clumps approximately 1-1/2 inches in diameter, about 2 inches apart on a butter-greased cookie sheet. Place in pre-heated 350 degree oven for around 10 minutes, until lightly golden, but still soft in the middle. They shouldn’t get flat. If they do, add more oatmeal to rest of batter.

Ice Cream Ingredients: 2 cups whole milk, 2 cups heavy cream, 8 eggs, 1 tsp. kosher salt, 1 cup sugar, 2 vanilla beans scraped, 1 tbsp. vanilla extract, 1 dark chocolate bar chopped into small pieces Directions: Add milk, cream, sugar, salt, beans, and vanilla to a pot. Bring to a simmer and take off heat. Whisk eggs until pale yellow and slowly add milk mixture to eggs while whisking. Strain through cheesecloth. Let chill for 12 hours. Mix in ice cream maker to manufacturer’s directions.

When done, add chocolate and build sandwiches or freeze until ready to use. E

nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

sugar, 1 pouch Certo Fruit Pectin, 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice Directions: Sanitize approximately six 4- to 8-ounce jars and lids with boiling water—allow to dry thoroughly. Crush raspberries one layer at a time. Martin says she puts them through a chinoix lined with five layers of cheesecloth. Help the raspberries through the cheesecloth by carefully and slowly squeezing. Place the strained, seedless raspberries into a bowl large enough to fit the sugar too. Add the sugar and stir. Let stand for 10 minutes then continue to stir until most of the sugar is dissolved. Mix pectin and lemon juice. Add the pectin to the raspberry and sugar mixture and stir about three minutes until sugar is dissolved and no longer really grainy.

Some sugar crystals will remain. Fill jars, being careful not to get rim of jars messy. Leave ½ inch of space from the top of the jar. Wipe off edges and immediately cover with the lids. Let the filled jars stand for 24 hours. You can store in the

refrigerator up to three weeks or freeze the jelly for up to one year.

For the crepes, use your favorite recipe. Martin likes the one from the old edition of the Joy of Cooking.

17

arts&culture Changing of the Guard

In the wake of tragedy, a new conductor has begun a fresh chapter for a local ensemble.

BY GAVIN BORCHERT

THURSDAY, MAY 8

18

Baron Samedi

MORGEN SCHULER

Choreographer Alain Buffard began his dancing life studying with Alwin Nikolais, and he seems to have taken to heart the American’s enthusiasm for unlikely multimedia combinations. Although Buffard’s oeuvre doesn’t resemble Nikolais’ abstract worlds, the French dancemaker shares his disregard for traditional vocabulary and structures. In Baron Samedi, named for a dandy skeleton in the Haitian voodoo pantheon, Buffard reaches beyond the deity’s religious identity to his deeper role as a trickster and a force for disruption.

The 2012 work is an examination of colonialism that draws as much from current affairs as historical events. Danced on an undulating stage (a physical manifestation of Samedi’s destabilizing nature), and set to 11 Kurt Weill songs (performed live), Baron Samedi makes it clear that nothing is really as it might seem. Buffard, who had been working to acclaim in Europe since 1998, died last December. This introduction for American audiences, only here and in New York, will likely also be our last look. (Through Sun.) On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9888, onthe boards.org. $25. 8 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ

Smith leading a recent rehearsal of Orchestra Seattle.

a search, the organization was committed to as much transparency and musician input as possible. The first step was to poll orchestra and chorus members as to how the selection criteria should be prioritized: musical interpretation? personality? fundraising ability?

One thing that turned out to be vital to the Singers, unsurprisingly, was skill in choral conducting. “We’re not just an orchestra, not just a chorus,” Smith-Shangrow makes clear, “we’re married. It’s always been who we are.”

Though “Clinton was kind of the outlier,” she says—most of the other auditioners were local conductors they had worked with—his opera experience was a boon at their first encounter: “The chorus was mind-blown . . . he was the first person that came in and really understood the chorus—they were starving.” Smith and Smith-Shangrow agree there was immediate rapport; he calls it a “connection,” she marvels at the “comfort level.”

Naturally the getting-to-know-you period

is ongoing. Smith-Shangrow mentions their December Messiah, an annual signature work for Shangrow, as an eye-opener. For decades they’d done it George’s way—“We knew every phrase, every nuance”—but under Smith they had an opportunity to “relearn the piece,” she says.

Trumpeter Janet Young agrees, heartened by the way Smith “respected that love and loyalty and sense of tradition” that Shangrow had inspired while bringing his own fresh ideas. “We’re aiming for a crisp, clear sound,”

she says, and Smith reduces the size of the string section when appropriate for a better balance with the Singers. Smith is expanding the ensemble’s repertory; in choosing Elgar’s cantata The Music-Makers for this Saturday’s concert, he says, he deliberately sought a piece they’d never done.

Young is also impressed with some of the new chorus members who have joined; “recruitment had been difficult,” she says, in the interim seasons, but Smith’s hiring established a stability that has attracted new members.

OS/SCS’s March 15 concert showed them at their peak, with Smith leading a powerful Mozart Requiem, a meltingly poignant performance of Samuel Jones’ Elegy, and a Liszt Totentanz with pianist Mark Salman that blew the audience’s hair back in the intimate confines of Queen Anne’s First Free Methodist Church. It’s a testament to the strong foundation Shangrow built, and the dedication he inspired, that these musicians are able to thrive with a new hand on the helm. But he’ll remain a guiding spirit for many. “I have some of his ashes in my violin case,” reports Smith-Shangrow of the man who was not only a maestro but a family member. “He comes with me to all the rehearsals.” E

gborchert@seattleweekly.com

FIRST FREE METHODIST CHURCH 3200 Third Ave. W., 682-5208, osscs.org. $10–$25 (17 and under free). 7:30 p.m. Sat., May 10.

Burnett has decades of showbiz stories to share.

RANDEE ST. NICHOLAS/MABEL CAT, INC.

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

F

or any music-making organization, a change in leadership is a challenge; but when the change is unexpected, sudden, and tragic—and when the leader in question was the only one the organization had ever had—it’s immeasurably more difficult. So when Clinton Smith takes the podium Saturday night to conduct Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers in music by Ives, Barber, Elgar, and others to close his first year as their head, it’ll represent the end of a time of flux and the return of a measure of normalcy for one of the region’s most accomplished community ensembles.

Conductor/keyboardist George Shangrow, who had founded the Singers in 1969 (at age 18!) and Orchestra Seattle a decade later, was killed in a car accident in the summer of 2010. But the stricken performers were never in doubt about whether to continue, violinist and board member Stephen Hegg reported at the time: “I think it was almost a simultaneous thought for most people: ‘How do we go on after this,’ but ‘We must go on.’ I don’t know anybody who thought ‘We’re going to disband.’ To disband now would be such an offense to George.”

The void was filled by two years of guest conductors and a season-long search in which six candidates (out of 50 or so applicants from around the world) were invited to conduct the dual ensemble. But last June 24, OS/SCS named Smith, 32, its second music director in 44 years. Like Shangrow, he’s a musician of exceptional versatility, studying piano and violin as well as conducting at the Universities of Texas and Michigan and working in choral, chamber, and contemporary music. (Under Shangrow, OS/SCS established a reputation for being amenable to local composers.) From Michigan, Smith moved to a post with the Minnesota Opera, which led to the conductorship, which he still holds, of the St. Cloud Symphony (also in Minnesota). Freelance and summer-festival work from San Francisco to Juilliard and Portland to Santa Fe extends his resume impressively.

Three years was “just the right amount of time” for the transition, Smith feels; one thing the organization needed to do was enlarge its infrastructure. “George did everything,” Smith says; “this was his life”—including scheduling, arranging venues, courting donors, and more.

One of OS/SCS’s challenges, he says, was to first “figure out a leadership strategy minus a music director.”

Kenna Smith-Shangrow—violinist, board member, search-committee member, and George’s sister-in-law—agrees. The accident “left this huge vacuum . . . we were scrambling in the midst of our own grief and shock.” But when at last time came to launch

ThisWeek’s PickList

FRIDAY, MAY 9

Carol Burnett

Reading the recent biography of the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael (because this is what film critics do with their free time), I was delighted to find that she was a big fan of The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967 to 1978. (Kael’s opinion of Burnett’s few prior movies is a different matter.) So was I, so were my parents, and so I suspect are an awful lot of television watchers whose taste was formed during those pre-cable days of network dominance. Say what you will about the cornucopia of HBO, Netflix, and streaming today; Burnett, at 81, is one of the dwindling few stars

from the era of a unified TV audience. Hers was a show families could watch together, with comedy sketches that could be discussed the next day at the office or school. Tonight—sadly without her old ensemble of Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner, and Tim Conway—she’ll share recollections of the old show, take questions from the audience, and bask in the adoration of her fans.

(A whole new generation has been introduced to the program since the 2012 DVD box set.) Maybe she can shed some light on Korman’s inability to keep a straight face, as in the famous dentist skit with Conway: It’s on YouTube, and you need to watch it immediately. The Paramount, 911 Pine

SUNDAY, MAY 11

Seattle Youth Symphony

There are orchestral works that a youth group can play with relish and sound their best; there are challenging works that stretch the players’ technique; then there are works that make you wonder what the hell the conductor was thinking in programming it. Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912) is one of these. The Seattle Youth Symphony is playing the third section of the ballet this afternoon; from its opening sunrise, the most glorious ever written, to its rousing “Danse générale” finale, it’s one of the trickiest orchestral works in the repertory, especially for the winds (professional orchestras often use excerpts as required audition pieces). Not only are the individual parts highly virtuosic, but with Ravel’s magically translucent, diaphanous scoring, there’s nowhere to hide. (Back in the day with my college orchestra I played both this and The Rite of Spring; the Ravel was harder.) Conductor Stephen Rogers Radcliffe is grouping it with favorites by Tchaikovsky and Wagner, and has invited cellist Joshua Roman to play Aaron Jay Kernis’ Dreamsongs. Written for Roman, who premiered it in Ohio a year ago, it’s a showcase of inventive color, from the bright twang of guitarpicked cello to the djembe, wooden rattle, and gourd in the percussion section. Benaroya Hall,

St., 877-784-4849, stg presents.org. $31–$121.

7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

Third Ave. & Union St., 362-2300, syso.org. $15–$45. 3 p.m. GAVIN BORCHERT

MONDAY, MAY 12 LEVENSON COLLECTION

SATURDAY, MAY 10

Deco Japan

Prospect St., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org. $5–$7. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

Yes, Pulp Fiction is 20 years old. How many motherfucking candles does it deserve on its motherfucking cake? As many motherfucking candles as Jules Winnfield wants, that’s how many. Such is the movie’s influence that, also owing to the prior Reservoir Dogs, a whole generation of moviegoers has been raised in what we now call the Post-Tarantino Era. As the director and Oscar-winning co-writer of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino influenced countless young filmmakers in ways both good and bad. Everyone wanted to make crime movies full of long, loopy, colorful speeches, using as much profanity as possible, attaching odd pop-culture digressions to the scaffolding of traditional movie plots. I won’t bore you with the long list of Tarantino wannabes; the truth is that he’s outlasted most of them, validated himself in Hollywood with more unlikely hits (e.g., Inglourious Basterds), attracted big stars with his writing, and finally earned a whole Oscar—not just a half—for scripting Django Unchained (which also did a whole lot more business than anyone expected). But this is the movie that brought Tarantino to the mainstream, with its wonderfully elliptical plotting and abrupt reversals and tangents, plus that all-star cast. (If you need reminding: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Amanda Plummer, and Harvey Keitel deliver line after quotable line. Let’s not speak of Maria de Medeiros.) The movie runs through Thursday. Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St.,

523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5–$8.

8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER E

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This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920–1945) are also unusual.

Among the roughly 200 items on view—prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.—we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly.

By the ’20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ’30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period.

For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar—even if they now wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Through Oct. 19). Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E.

Pulp Fiction

elevate

19

a&c» Stage TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

TOWN HALL

(5/7) Paul Taylor The Millennials’ Economic Burden (5/10) Intiman presents A Savage Chat with Tony Kushner (5/11) Julene Bair ‘The Ogallala Road’

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

ARTS & CULTURE

@seattleweekly

PReturning to Albert Joseph THELAB@INSCAPE, 815 SEATTLE BLVD. S., 800838-3006, SATORI-GROUP.COM. $15. 8 P.M. THURS.-SUN. & MON., MAY 12. ENDS MAY 25.

(5/12) Dan Gross Gun Reform Where Do We Go From Here?

(5/13) Sustainable Path: Local Agricultural Developments (5/13) Seattle Arts & Lectures: A Reading with Anne Carson

Japanese Grill & Sushi Bar

(5/14) Rick Atkinson Allied Triumph of WWII (5/14) Stacey D’Erasmo A Musician’s Wild Ride

TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

OPEN Tuesday - Sunday

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

ARTS & CULTURE

(5/15) Cameron Camp The Dementia-Friendly Community

621 Broadway E. Seattle, WA 98102 206.324.3633

(5/16) Seattle Arts & Lectures: Timothy F. Geithner (5/17) PSSO presents 15th Anniversary Season Finale (5/18) Seattle Festival Orchestra: Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto (5/19) *THREE EVENTS FOR $5!* UW Science Now: Chelsea Kahn Communicating Climate Change

(5/11) Julene Bair ‘The Ogallala Road’

An environmental crisis that, for most of us, remains unseen TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

CIVICS

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

Joshua Howe The Global Warming Rut

20

Depending on your tolerance for and enjoyment of confusion, The Satori Group’s latest laboratory concoction will either confound or delight you.

If you truly groove on having no bearings, stop reading and just go see it. Others, read on with the caveat that I’m not sure my understanding of the plot, characters, or even subject here fits with the intentions of local playwright Spike Friedman (no relation). Notwithstanding this uncertainty, the play—developed over three years with the involvement of the entire company, plus workshop audiences—kept me intrigued and seeking, if sometimes frustrated.

A fondness for sci-fi may help you better navigate the terrain. There’s some sort of three-way war being waged among 1) a faction called “statists,” 2) rebels of some sort, who are reprogramming our weak human brains to accept rationalist theories of charismatic leader-brainBarr and washer Albert Franzen.

Joseph, and 3) counter-rebels whose vestigial tattered memories make them nostalgic for emotions and the pre-rationalist regime.

Recently transplanted from L.A., LoraBeth Barr plays Andrea, our rather stiff, strident guide to the struggle. Quinn Franzen is Leo, Andrea’s sensitive, brain-damaged charge. Information ekes out through their interactions, and from Andrea’s rants at and pleas to her captors, colleagues, and the shaky video image of Albert Joseph himself. The torrent of details, accusations, buzzwords, and narrative shards makes for a fun puzzle, but Barr and Franzen don’t quite sell an emotional connection between them. Maybe they’re not supposed to, as the setting is a universe of distrust and disconnection, but the story seems to set up that expectation.

Adding to the sense of instability, after the first act, the audience and two performers switch positions: us on the stage, they on the steeply pitched bleachers. Skillful lighting and sound design also help enlarge the scope of the compact stage. (Alex Matthews and Caitlin Sullivan direct the production.)

Among the principal pleasures of this enigmatic two-hander is the knit of unfolding context and the texture of the language, which often tumbles too quickly for full comprehension and veers between yearning lyricism and sophomore bullshit session. Its drawbacks, however, include a frequent sense of manufactured urgency and arbitraryseeming mood shifts. If this is the future, it’s an artificial one, drained of humanity’s errata, including war, joy, caring. I wouldn’t want to live there, but Returning to Albert Joseph succeeds in planting bugs in your head that will be hard to override.

ALEX GARLAND PHOTOGRAPHY

CIVICS SCIENCE ARTS & CULTURE COMMUNITY (5/15) Seattle University: Rabbi Donniel Hartman WWW.TOWNHALLSEATTLE.ORG Putting God Second TOWN HALL

Opening Nights

Roundtable with Sustainable Path Climate Change’s Local Impacts (5/19) Reclaiming Prosperity Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Saru Jayaraman, and Anna Greenberg Gender and Work

(5/14) Rick Atkinson Allied Triumph of WWII TOWN HALL

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WWW.TOWNHALLSEATTLE.ORG TOWN HALL

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MARGARET FRIEDMAN E

stage@seattleweekly.com

» Performance B Y G AV I N B O R C H E R T

Stage OPENINGS & EVENTS

CREEPS In David Freeman’s 1972 play, five men with cere-

bral palsy in a men’s room talk frankly about their lives.

Seattle Subversive Theatre is staging this in, yes, an actual men’s room. The Ballard Underground, 2220 N.W. Market St., seattlesubversivetheatre.org. $25. Opens May 9. 7:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends May 31.

KEELY AND DU The abortion wars are dramatized in Jane Martin’s wrenching ’90s play. Second Story Repertory Theatre, 16587 N.E. 74th St., Redmond, 425-881-6777, secondstoryrep.org. $27. Preview May 8, opens May 9. 8 p.m.

Thurs.–Sat., plus 2 p.m. Sun., May 25. Ends May 25.

TONY KUSHNER The eminent playwright appears in anticipation of Intiman’s staging of his Angels in America (Aug. 12–Sept. 21). Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., intiman.org. $10.

2 p.m. Sat., May 10.

ONE-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL Several dozen people (Elizabeth Heffron, Marya Sea Kaminski, and K Brian Neel, to pick a few names randomly) contribute tiny new work.

ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $20.

8 p.m. Sat., May 10, 2 & 8 p.m. Sun., May 11.

SHOSTAKOVICH A reading of Jason Grote’s new play about the composer and his anguished relationship with the Soviet regime. ACT Theatre, Free. 7 p.m. Mon., May 12–Tues., May 13.

TROUBLE IN FAIRYTALEZANIA & WILD WES Two lively children’s shows from Taproot’s touring company. Isaac Studio Theatre, 208 N. 85th St., 781-9707, taproottheatre.org. $5–$12. Opens May 10. Noon & 2 p.m. Sat. Ends May 17.

CURRENT RUNS

CHAOS THEORY In Courtney Meaker’s new absurdist tragi-

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Dance

FULL TILT 2014 New contemporary-dance works by Noelle

Chun, Bryon Carr, and others. Velocity Dance Center, 1621 12th Ave., 800-838-3006, evokeproductions.org. $15–$18.

7 & 9 p.m. Fri., May 9–Sat., May 10.

BARON SAMEDI SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 18.

Classical, Etc.

• SEATTLE JAZZ COMPOSERS ENSEMBLE All kinds

of new work on this fifth-anniversary celebration evening.

The Royal Room, 5000 Rainier Ave. S., 906-9920, thefrank agency.org. Pay what you can. 8 p.m. Wed., May 7.

CLUB SHOSTAKOVICH Dmitri’s 10th (of 15) string quartets, plus music by Rebecca Clarke and Brahms.Kenyon Hall, 7904 35th Ave. S.W., triopardalote.com. $5–$14. 7:30 p.m. Fri., May 9.

ENSIGN SYMPHONY & CHORUS Crawford Gates’ Vision of Eternity and other works by Bernstein, Haydn, and more. Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., 215-4747. $16–$36. 7:30 p.m. Fri., May 9.

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YOUNG COMPOSERS’ • SEATTLE SYMPHONY The annual, and always fascinating, WORKSHOP

concert of new student work, played by SSO members.

Benaroya Recital Hall, Third Ave. and Union St., 215-4800, seattlesymphony.org. Free. 7:30 p.m. Fri., May 9.

THE ESOTERICS Music by Ravel in “SYLVANA: Music of the forests, flowers, and trees.” At St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 4805 N.E. 45th St., 8 p.m. Fri., May 9; Grace Episcopal Church, 8595 N.E. Day Road, Bainbridge Island, 2 p.m. Sat., May 10; and Holy Rosary Catholic Church, 4142 42nd Ave. S.W., 2 p.m. Sun., May 11. $10–$20. theesoterics.org.

SEATTLE SYMPHONY On a “Discover Music” family concert, environmentally aware music by Eric Banks (excerpts from his Our Earth opera trilogy) and others.

Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., 215-4747, seattle symphony.org. $15–$20. 11 a.m. Sat., May 10.

HILARY FIELD Music by Villa-Lobos and others for guitar, sponsored by the Seattle Classic Guitar Society. Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 365-0845, fryemuseum.org. Free.

2 p.m. Sat., May 10.

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SEATTLE/SEATTLE CHAMBER • ORCHESTRA SEE PREVIEW, PAGE 18.

SINGERS TUDOR CHOIR Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Blessed Sacrament Church, 5050 Eighth Ave. N.E., tudor choir.org. 7:30 p.m. Sat., May 10.

STRING PROJECT CHAMBER • AMERICANQuintets

by Brahms and Dvorak played PLAYERS

by bassist Barry Lieberman and friends. Brechemin Auditorium, School of Music, UW campus, 685-8384, music.washington.edu. $15. 2 p.m. Sun., May 11.

SEATTLE YOUTH SYMPHONY SEE PAGE 19.

MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE The 1918 silent The Yellow Ticket, with a new score, performed live, by Alicia Svigals.

Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., 365-7770, musicof remembrance.org. $40. 7:30 p.m. Mon., May 12.

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SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

comedy, the audience is dropped, mid-despair, into the living room of Frannie (Keiko Green) as she’s coping with the loss of her lover. She and her quirky friends, maleidentifying Bach (Evelyn Dehais) and dim-witted Seth (Drew Highlands), build what seems to be an alternatereality machine; all three have their motives for using it.

IRFAN SHARIFF Annex Theatre, 1100 E. Pike St., 728-0933, annextheatre.org. $5–$20. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends May 17.

GONE WILD! The Libertinis add music, burlesque, and comedy to this zoology lesson. Annex Theatre, $5–$10. 11 p.m. Fri.–Sat.Ends May 10.

HAIR The smash ’60s musical is full of hippie goodness and song. ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., 938-0339, arts west.org. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. Ends June 7.

I SAW U Unexpected Productions’ new show is inspired by personals: What happens when a “missed connection” connects? Unexpected Productions Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley, 800-838-3006, unexpectedproductions.org. $12–$15. 8:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends June 21.

KING LEAR Seattle Shakespeare Company’s fine acting is in ample evidence, but this overly cerebral take on a cathartic tale made me want to run outside and gasp for the saturated hues of messy real life. Dan Kremer’s Lear, tall and sardonic, does more with the humorous and witty situations than with the tragic ones. Beneath him, the characters soon sift into two camps: supporters of nefarious sisters Goneril (Linda K. Morris) and Regan (Debra Pralle); and supporters of Lear and exiled Cordelia (Elinor Gunn). The most memorable performance is from Eric Riedmann as evil Edmund, who narrates his intentions to the audience like a stand-up comedian. Sheila Daniels directs this rather desaturated tragedy, which runs three hours with two intermissions. MARGARET FRIEDMAN Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, 733-8222. $25–$48.

Runs Wed.–Sun.; see seattleshakespeare.org for exact schedule. Ends May 17.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Alan Menken & Howard Ashman’s musical toys affectionately with two of America’s enduring infatuations: cheesy monster movies and jukebox pop. Appropriately, this co-production of ACT and the 5th Avenue cranks the fun dial up to 11. KEVIN PHINNEY ACT Theatre, $20–$50. See acttheatre.org for exact schedule. Ends June 15.

LOLLYVILLE In Bret Fetzer and Juliet Waller Pruzan’s new show, a ghost bent on revenge “returns to the site of his fatal heartbreak: an isolated village inhabited entirely by women.” Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave., macha monkey.org. $18–$20. 8 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends May 24.

A NEW BRAIN William Finn’s semi-memoirish musical about a songwriter and his medical issues. Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, 800-838-3006, seattle

stageright.org. $15–$20. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. plus Mon., May 12. Ends May 17.

QUICKIES, VOL. 15 Live Girls! Theater presents short plays on the themes of science and magic. Theater Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., 800-838-3006, lgtheater.org. $5–$20. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends May 10.

RETURNING TO ALBERT JOSEPH SEE PAGE 20.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW Virginal heroine Lucy is traveling through Italy with her chaperone; there she’s courted by the romantic George, which threatens a potential match back in England with uptight Cecil. Whom will she choose?!? Well, you’ve seen the 1985 movie, so you know.

5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave., 625-1900. $29 and up.

Runs Tues.–Sun., see 5thavenue.org for exact schedule.

Ends May 11.

TRUTH LIKE THE SUN Local writer Jim Lynch set this recent novel during our 1962 World’s Fair. Now see Book– It Repertory Theatre’s stage adaptation. Center House Theatre, Seattle Center, 216-0833. $23–$45. Runs Wed.– Sun.; see book-it.org for exact schedule. Ends May 18.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Edward Albee’s 1962 play is a landmark stage dissection of the American family, in which he demonstrates how it’s possible to rip flesh from bone and finally destroy a person with nothing more than verbal skills, a few marital secrets, and the firm conviction that your opponent is beneath contempt. Martha (Pamela Reed) and George (R. Hamilton Wright) hold each other responsible for ruining their lives.

They’re daring each other to end their marriage—or raise the stakes with another toxic revelation. Director Braden Abraham’s production takes this circular firing-squad masterwork to Olympian heights and Stygian depths.

KEVIN PHINNEY Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 443-2222, $12–$80. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun., plus 2 p.m. some Wed, Sat., & Sun; see seattlerep.org for exact schedule. Ends May 18.

For many more Current Runs, see seattleweekly.com.

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arts&culture» Visual Arts B Y K E LT O N S E A R S

Openings & Events JOEY BATES Of Marrow and Leaf presents intricately

crafted paper cuts and reliefs that “explore the beauty of deadly plants in conjunction with the human figure.”

Opening reception, 5-9 p.m. Thurs., May 8. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way (Suite 1), 832-6063, ghostgallery.org, Mon.-Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Through June 9.

HANNAH CWIEK In To No Avail, Cwiek displays her newest drawings on paper, wall drawings, and installations. Opening reception 6 p.m. Thurs., May 8.

Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave., 709-9797, vermillionseattle. com, Tues.-Sun., 4 p.m.-midnight. Through June 7.

DECO JAPAN SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 19.

DISTILLED: Whiskey is the theme to this crockery from 20 local ceramics artists. Public reception 6-8 p.m. Sat., May 10. Pottery Northwest, 226 First Ave. N., 285-4421, potterynorthwest.org, Tues.-Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Through May 30.

GEORGETOWN ART ATTACK This month’s shindig features legendary Seattle comic artist Pete Bagge, a collection of vintage Seattle punk posters at Georgetown Records, Heather Hudson’s pulp-inspired vignettes and more., See georgetownartattack.com.

Second Saturday of every month, 6-9 p.m.

HIAWATHA OPEN HOUSE Resident artists open their doors, with music by Seattle Jazz Underground at 9 p.m. Artspace Hiawatha Lofts, 843 Hiawatha Place S., 709-3811, artspaceusa.org, Sat., May 10, 6-11 p.m.

KIRKLAND ARTIST STUDIO TOUR Over 40 local artists show their work at 19 galleries and home studios.

Reception at the KAC store: 3-5 p.m. Sunday. Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., Kirkland, 425-822-7161, kirklandartscenter.org, Sat., May 10, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun., May 11, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

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The Little House That Would Edith Macefield became a celebrity in the last two years of her life (1921–2008), a symbol of gentrification and its discontents. She wouldn’t agree to sell her little Ballard bungalow, now enveloped and preserved by a retail-commercial building. (The tiny cottage may become a vacation rental, according to its new owner; so much for a gallery or cultural purpose.)

Now French artist Laurence Landois draws inspiration from the holdout abode in her show On the Way, which includes

DAVID LA BOON La Boon’s Vulnerable collects sensual

drawings meant to question sexual norms. Gay City Health Project, 511 E. Pike St., 860-6969, gaycity.org, Thu., May 8, 3-8 p.m.

COURTNEE PAPASTATHIS A collection of the artist’s confessional, oftentimes erotic drawings and paintings.

Broadcast Coffee, 1623 Bellevue Ave., 467-4717, broadcastcoffee.com, Opens May 8, Mon.-Sun., 6:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Through June 12.

PATH WITH ART SPRING EXHIBIT 2014 Path With Art Helps those recovering from addiction and homelessness by connecting them with art in various media.

Haddon Hall Gallery, 1919 Third Ave., Free, Fri., May 9, 6-8 p.m.

SPRING GEAR Mark Walker, Janet Hill, and Niki Havekost take time to celebrate the onset of spring with this collection of bronze sculpture, figurines, paintings and mixed-media work. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thurs., May 8. Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, 328-5100, blindfoldgallery.com, Weds.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Through June 7.

THROUGH OUR EYES: GENDER & SEXUALITY

Photos and textual works exploring the artists’ individual visions of gender and sex. Reception 6-8 p.m.

Weds., May 14. Seattle Central Community College, 1701 Broadway, 344-4379, seattlecentral.org, Opens May 12, Mon.-Fri., 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Through May 29.

TRIPPING BALLS A collection of work inspired by the psychedelic experience. Opening reception 6-10 p.m.

Thurs., May 8. True Love Art Gallery, 1525 Summit Ave., 227-3572, trueloveart.com, Mon.-Sun., 12-8 p.m.

Through June 8.

UCKI OOD ucki ood, an art studio composed of Missy Douglas and Kim Rask, presents this collection 2:365 in which Douglas painted one canvas every single day of 2013 in an effort to explore her bipolar disorder.

Opening reception 6-11:30 p.m. Thurs., May 8. Sole Repair, 1001 E. Pike St., 979-7467, solerepairshop.com, Mon.-Sun., 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Through June 5.

WALLINGFORD ART WALK Participating venues and galleries include Stu Stu Studios, Fuel Coffee, Julia’s Restaurant, and Oasis Art Gallery. See wallingfordartwalk.org for full roster of attractions. First Wednesday of every month, 6-9 p.m.

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like jellyfish tendrils or skirts. As in the drawings, there’s a fanciful, almost wishful aspect; the multiple houses gain a kind of grandeur, an extra stature despite their size. Edith is gone, but here her home achieves a ghostly afterlife—or perhaps afterlives, which may be part of Landois’ point. It takes more than one house to form a community. Room 104, 306 S. Washington St. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 953-8104, room104gallery.com. Free. 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Wed.– Sat. Ends May 31.

BY BRIAN MILLER

BRIAN MILLER

a series of architectural fantasias of the Macefield House, drawn on graph paper.

The form of the house becomes a seed, a design meme, that Landois repeats and repeats obsessively, expanding it into unlikely skyscrapers and dense cityscapes—as if the house had won a larger victory in that urban battle. Dangling in the center of the gallery, like mobiles or Chinese lanterns, are 10 small-scale models of the house, a grouping appropriately called Home Sweet Home. They trail long gossamer-white streamers, something

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

THEFUSSYEYE

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SEATTLE WEEKLY’S

SIFF Preview Guide SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

On Stands 5/14!

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Featuring: • Must-see films of the season • mini-reviews • interviews with local filmmakers, actors and directors.

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arts&culture» Books

BY DIANA LE

Authors & Events Seattle cartoonist celebrates • PETER BAGGE The Buddy Buys a Dump. Fantagraphics

the publication of Bookstore & Gallery, 1201 S. Vale St., 658-0110, fantagraphics.com, Sat., May 10, 6-8 p.m.

JULENE BAIR Family legacies, farming, and environmentalism figure in her new The Ogallala Road. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org, $5, Sun., May 11, 7:30 p.m.

SEBASTIAN BARRY The Dublin novelist and playwright reads from The Temporary Gentleman. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org, Wed., May 7, 7 p.m.

CINDY CHUPACK After two decades writing bestselling books and award-winning television series based on her life as a single woman, she shares from her memoir The Longest Date. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 800-335-7323, bookstore.washington.edu, Sat., May 10, 6 p.m.

ANTHONY DOERR The Idaho novelist reads from his WWII-set romance All the Light We Cannot See. Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook. com, Thu., May 8, 7 p.m.

ARTHUR DORROS Author Arthur Dorros will be doing a reading and signing for his new book Abuelo about a young boy’s adventures with his grandmother.

University Book Store, Wed., May 7, 7 p.m.

JULIA GLASS She reads from her new novel And the Dark Sacred Night. Elliott Bay Book Co., Mon., May 12, 7 p.m.

ABBI GLINES A reading, discussion, and signing with the author of Rush Too Far: A Rosemary Beach Novel.

University Book Store - Bellevue, 990 102nd Ave. N.E., 425-462-4500, bookstore.washington.edu, Free, Wed., May 7, 6 p.m.

JUSTING GO He sets his novel The Steady Running of Send events to books@seattleweekly.com See seattleweekly.com for full listings. = Recommended

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the Hour at Everest base camp soon after WWI. (Also: 8 p.m. Thurs. at Eagle Harbor Books.) Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., 366-3333, thirdplacebooks.com, Wed., May 7, 7 p.m.

DAN GROSS The author and President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence discusses the NRA, Sandy Hook, and the bullies behind the open-carry movement. Town Hall, $5, Mon., May 12, 7:30 p.m.

LAMBDA AWARD FINALISTS READING On hand will be authors Nicola Griffith, Chavisa Woods, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Amber Dawn, Roma Raye, L.C. Chase, editor Evan Peterson. Elliott Bay Book Co., Thu., May 8, 7 p.m.

MARK LEIBOVICH He just announced a political journalism venture with Bloomberg News, and his latest book is This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital.

University Book Store, Tue., May 13, 7 p.m.

BEN ROSS The Maryland transit activist discusses his Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism. Elliott Bay Book Co., Wed., May 7, 7 p.m.

THE ROUND Music, poetry, and visual art combine in this monthly creative collaboration. Fremont Abbey Arts Center, 4272 Fremont Ave. N., 414-8325, fremontabbey.org, $8-$14, Second Tuesday of every month, 8 p.m.

• • •

SEATTLE MARITIME FESTIVAL STORIES OF THE SEA CONTEST The literary competition draws fish-

ers, sailors, and other folks as they present original stories, poems, and songs about their lives and experiences on the sea. Cash prizes are awarded to the top three finishers. The Highliner Pub, 3909 18th Ave. W., seattlepropellerclub.org. Thu., May 8, 8-10:30 p.m.

JAMES SUTTER His Pathfinder Tales series continues with its underworld adventures. University Book Store, Fri., May 9, 7 p.m.

PAUL TAYLOR His The Next America deals with the social, cultural, economic and demographic trends that are reshaping the U.S. Town Hall, $5, Wed., May 7, 7:30 p.m.

COLSON WHITEHEAD He expands on his Grantland article with a memoir of his time at the green felt table, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death.

University Book Store, Mon., May 12, 7 p.m.

•

THE CURATOR & THE COLLECTOR KENDALL BROWN & ROBERT LEVENSON DECO JAPAN: SHAPING ART AND CULTURE

Purchase tickets at visitsam.org.

THURSDAY, MAY 15 7 PM ASIAN ART MUSEUM VOLUNTEER PARK Image: Songbook for “The Modern Song” (Modan bushi) (detail), 1930, K. Kotani, Japanese, ink on paper, 16 x 20 in., Courtesy of The Levenson Collection.

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

Kendall Brown, Professor of Art at California State University Long Beach and curator of Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920–1945, converses with Robert Levenson about his collection, from which the exhibition is drawn.

Join them as they explore the fascinatingly complex culture in Japan between World War I and World War II.

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arts&culture» Film

Opening ThisWeek PBlue Ruin OPENS FRI., MAY 9 AT SUNDANCE CINEMAS. RATED R. 90 MINUTES.

Layering humor into violent situations is a trademark of both multiplex and American indie movies, and it’s frequently an empty gesture—a hipster wink to the audience, a cheapening of anything like real engagement with the material. However: While fugitive humor emerges in regular intervals in the bloody, micro-budget revenge picture Blue Ruin, this is something different. The jokes are funny,

The movie is the sophomore effort of director-writer Jeremy Saulnier, a clever chap who clearly wants to grab some attention with this ingenious effort. And yet, except for the explosions of violence, the movie isn’t flashy; Saulnier trusts his material enough to let the early reels unfold slowly, with very little dialogue, as he sets up his dominoes. Throwaway references gain weight as revelations leak out along the way—it’s suggested that the blue car might have a significant history in this saga, for instance— and Saulnier already knows how to string along a running gag. (On the latter score, pay attention to the car keys.) The way the humor can’t entirely crowd out something horribly sad is one of the film’s real achievements. That, and the observation that a bullet wound hurts less than being shot with an arrow. That might not sound funny, but in context? Hilarious. ROBERT HORTON

USDA’s goal is basically to sell as much food as possible—including corn; and from that, high fructose corn syrup. Which side do you suppose is winning? “It’s fair to say the U.S. government is subsidizing the obesity epidemic,” says Pollan, who then pauses a beat. “Indirectly.”

The new American norm of gluttony, sloth, and diabetes is “the result of the biochemistry, not the cause,” says UCSF’s Dr. Robert Lustig.

In plainer terms, as a chubby Houston teen despairs, “Your brain’s telling you, ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’” That’s because the processed food industry has so successfully engineered its products since the ’70s to be addictive yet never sating. Willpower counts for little (ask any alcoholic or junkie). And despite the efforts of Michelle Obama, whose Let’s Move initiative is roundly debunked here, “We are not going to exercise our way out of this obesity problem,” says one nutritionist. Exercise is just another panacea, like “low-fat”—and a smokescreen by the food industry to distract from its culpability. (Parallels to Big Tobacco are explicitly drawn.)

Fed Up ends with an appeal for better labeling (especially concerning sugar), federal standards for sugar and salt content, a tax on soda pop, and a ban on such advertising to kids. But don’t expect candidate Hillary to mention any of those ideas—especially to her donors. Instead, Fed Up presents another dismaying example of regulatory capture by industry. As our weight goes up, so do profits. BRIAN MILLER

Vengeance is messy for Dwight (Blair).

It Felt Like Love RUNS FRI., MAY 9-THURS., MAY 15 AT NORTHWEST FILM FORUM. NOT RATED. 82 MINUTES

RADIUS-TWC

BRIAN MILLER

Neighbors OPENS FRI., MAY 9 AT SUNDANCE AND OTHER THEATERS. RATED R. 96 MINUTES.

If his buddy James Franco can star in a current Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men, is it possible for Seth Rogen to elevate his profile beyond that of schlubby stoner? He lost weight for The Green Hornet, but no one cared. This fun but formulaic comedy pits him, as a married homeowner and new father, against Zac Efron, playing the rival patriarch of a rowdy frat house next door. We’ve got to get Delta Psi put on probation, so our baby can sleep at night!

The conflict writes itself, and you really do feel these likeable two stars could do more—if not Steinbeck, then something that moves them against type.

Efron, once the Disney idol, is certainly capable of undermining his image (and embracing it, in several shirtless scenes). When

PFed Up Grocery shopping is already hard enough: budgeting for family meals, Safeway coupons, Costco memberships, the guilt of an occasional stop at McDonalds. Then there are the hectoring experts who tell us we’re poisoning our kids with excess salt, sugar, and fat. Add to that the food documentary, a burgeoning genre to which producers Katie Couric and Laurie David (An Inconvenient Truth) now make their contribution, and you begin to feel like moving to a desert island to subsist entirely on coconuts. (Don’t tell me there’s a health risk there, too; I don’t want to hear it.)

Narrated by Couric, Stephanie Soechtig’s advocacy doc is slickly made, studded with food gurus (Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, etc.), and sympathetic to the sad young teens we see struggling with obesity. “It’s passed on from generations,” says a South Carolina kid, most of whose family is also overweight. Yet heredity is only part of our four-decade obesity epidemic, which the filmmakers convincingly trace back to a collision between industry and regulators.

On the one hand, the FDA is supposed to keep our food healthy. On the other, the

VARIACE FILMS

OPENS FRI., MAY 9 AT VARSITY. RATED PG. 92 MINUTES.

Piersanti’s Lila goes on the prowl.

images of sexuality. Lila’s more developed BFF Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni) is already churning her way through eager boys, which Lila observes with a mix of queasiness and envy.

These two girls are competitors, Hittman suggests, and boys are a way to gain status. When

Rogen and wife (Rose Byrne) trick him into a fight with a loyal frat bro (Dave Franco), pushing and shoving give way to the dreaded mutual testicle grab. Efron stares at his foe and declares, with berserk conviction, “I’ll hold

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

for one thing, but they also serve a purpose. If plenty of movies (and novels and plays) preach lessons on the negative toll of revenge, this one goes straight for revenge-as-absurdity. Why wouldn’t we laugh at the subject?

Dwight (the heroic Macon Blair) lives in a disintegrating blue car by the seashore. He receives disturbing news: The man convicted of killing Dwight’s parents is being released from prison. This sets in motion Dwight’s revenge, a plan so haphazard and freely improvised that at times it approximates the end-over-end momentum of a Road Runner cartoon. The road leads to Dwight’s sister’s house—where the movie briefly flirts with a Home Alone homage—and the home of the killer’s family, a brood so stoked with backwoods clannishness that they seem prepared to give up everything just to wipe Dwight from the face of the Earth. There’s also a terrific interlude involving Dwight’s old high-school buddy (Devin Ratray, one of the glorious brothers from Nebraska), a gun enthusiast with a meticulous approach to problem-solving. Along with its exploration of revenge scenarios, Blue Ruin is adept at suggesting that America’s heartland is rife with characters who fall just shy of the chainsawmassacre business.

When should your daughter start having sex?

14? 16? Prom night? College? Girls are entering puberty earlier and earlier—owing to what hormonal-environmental triggers is for scientists to decide. Eliza Hittman’s Brooklyn-set indie is emphatically local and personal, a kind of case study in adolescence. Her 14-year-old heroine Lila (the quietly compelling Gina Pierasanti) is, like all teens, bombarded by

Chiara disses a tattooed beach hunk, Lila leaps at the challenge: He’s a bad boy, college age, a trophy.

Lila’s calculating pursuit of Sammy (Ronen Rubenstein) leads to some dicey situations, but those are situations of her choosing. In this well-observed coming-of-age tale, Hittman respects Lila’s autonomy. She deliberately— and sometimes mortifyingly—tests boundaries with her widowed father, a neighbor boy, even her pet dog. It Felt Like Love could easily treat her sexual awakening for shock value, but Hittman never pushes her low-key debut drama in that direction. The unhurried mood is all summer light and marsh grass; the camera lingers on faces and body parts—like something from Larry Clark, but with a girl’s perspective. Lila also reminds me of poor Dawn Weiner in Welcome to the Dollhouse, with no control over her inappropriate impulses, yet Hittman isn’t interested in grotesquerie or humiliation.

Not much happens here, but I like what little does. If Lila doesn’t live up to her precocious ambitions, that feels like a small victory.

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 28 27

arts&culture» Film

GLEN WILSON/UNIVERSAL

» FROM PAGE 27

Efron (left) and Franco at the frat’s Robert De Nirothemed party.

onto your balls forever!” He’s committed to playing the handsome dunce, to the warm-hearted raunch that’s the hallmark of Apatow-land (NichEfron (left) and Franco atMarshall, the frat’s olas Stoller, of Forgetting Sarah directs).

Robert De Niro-themed party.

Rogen is a veteran of that milieu, again inhabiting the familiar role of the shambling, genial dude who doesn’t want to be an adult. When he and the wife get into a fight, they debate who ought to be the “Kevin James”—i.e. the irresponsible partner—in their marriage. But, really, the term they ought to be using is “Seth Rogen.” And that’s the problem with this movie’s ambition: It simply lets Rogen be Rogen. BRIAN MILLER

the act, as though sizing up the possibilities for future use (she certainly isn’t enjoying the sex).

By autumn, Isabelle has utilized the Internet to build a stable of clients for her sex business, charging men 300 Euros for an afternoon in a hotel room. Her mother (Géraldine Pailhas) and stepfather (Frédéric Pierrot) notice nothing, except that Isabelle seems to be showering a lot.

The other seasons bring fallout from this precocious behavior, especially as regards an elegant and elderly client ( Johan Leysen) who becomes Isabelle’s most favored john.

This attachment, and its implied daddy issues, threaten to turn the movie into a sentimental idea. (Isabelle’s own father is occasionally referred to and conspicuous by his absence.) Yet Ozon, whose customary form is irony (Swimming Pool and last year’s In the House are among the most characteristic of his prolific output), manages to pull out of that danger zone. Much of the second half of the film takes place as family drama, with Ozon wisely shifting focus from

28

SUNDANCE SELECTS

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

Vacth as wily seductress.

Young & Beautiful RUNS FRI., MAY 9-WEDS., MAY 14 AT SIFF FILM CENTER & SIFF CINEMA UPTOWN. NOT RATED. 95 MINUTES.

Before she began acting, Marine Vacth maintained a successful modeling career, and she has the impassive presence of a cover girl. This is not a knock; in François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, Vacth’s camera-ready and oft-naked presence, so ready to be gazed upon and consumed, is a boon to the film’s exploration of a disoriented teenager’s journey into a dark realm. She plays Isabelle, the heroine of this tale of four seasons.

In the opening summer segment, 17-year-old Isabelle loses her virginity while on vacation— Ozon depicts her standing outside herself during

Isabelle’s errant empowerment to others’ reactions to her misbehavior.

Vacth has the sort of beauty that places her in a long line of French actresses who practically demand the word “enigmatic” be placed before their names. She may or may not be an actress, but for this movie’s purposes, she certainly is Isabelle. Despite her performance and the film’s canny sidestepping of expected coming-of-age conventions, Young & Beautiful feels superficial, as though Ozon hadn’t fleshed out the scenario and instead relied on movie alchemy to fill in the gaps. Given the blank conception of the central character, that’s a tough trick—the magic kind—to pull off.

ROBERT HORTON E

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BY BRIAN MILLER

Opening FADING GIGOLO John Turturro’s new New York-set

comedy has received some awful reviews. In it he plays a florist-turned-gigolo, with Woody Allen as his pimp. Expect plenty of double entendres and mildly smutty jokes. Sofia Vergara and Vanessa Paradis are among Turturro’s unlikely clients. (R) Seven Gables, Opens Fri., May 9.

TEENAGE Matt Wolf’s new documentary chronicles the invention of the teenager, using a wide array of archival footage, plus readings from various sources

by Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, and others. An electronica score comes courtesy of Bradford Cox, of the band Deerhunter. (NR) Varsity, Opens Fri., May 9.

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SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

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“EASILY THE

MOST SUSPENSEFUL” AMERICAN-GabeFILM OF THE YEAR. Toro, INDIEWIRE

GIANT Our favorite film of 1999. The Iron • THE IRON is rendered in traditional animation, not CG. It’s

Giant a pure and simple animated fable that—among other things—gently introduces the notion of mortality to kids. Brad Bird (The Incredibles) takes the standardissue Cold War tropes of sci-fi invasion and A-bomb anxiety to create something genuinely special in 1958 Maine. Jennifer Aniston voices the single-parent mother of our 9-year-old hero, Hogarth; Vin Diesel— perfectly named here—supplies the mechanical utterances of said giant. Without stooping to parentoriented humor, The Iron Giant is still better most of today’s feature-length toons. (PG) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 9-13, 7 p.m.; Sat., May 10, 3 p.m.; Sun., May 11, 3 p.m.

FICTION SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 19.

• PULP potions, blood, • ROSEMARY’S BABY Delirious with and anagrams, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is the definitive cinematic treatment of what Mia Farrow’s onscreen husband John Cassavetes patronizingly calls the “pre-partum crazies.” (Does it mean anything that the sinister name “Roman Castevet” invokes both the director and one of the stars?)

Superbly acted (especially by bone-thin Farrow and Ruth Gordon as the ultimate neighbor from hell), it’s a satantango in the land of Is-this-real-or-am-I-crazy?, with a luridly literal ending that doesn’t negate the previous, more interior terrors. (R) ED PARK SIFF Film Center $6-$11, Sun., May 11, 4 p.m.

• SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL The fest continues with worthwhile titles including John Carpenter’s The Thing, Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Cinerama, $9, Through May 12.

SEATTLE TRUE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL Well over a dozen oddball indies, plus many shorts, will be screened at the Grand Illusion, Wing-It Productions, and Lucid Lounge. See trueindependent.org for prices, schedule, and other details. (NR) Through May 10.

TOTAL RECALL: It’s now possible to feel nostalgia not only for 1990-style sci-fi, but also for Arnold Schwarzenegger at that brief shining moment when he and director Paul Verhoeven teamed up to make this superior adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”). No Blade Runner, Total Recall is still a smart amalgam of action and paranoia, with the valence between reality and implanted memory always in doubt. Does Arnold’s hero save the red planet in his mind only? And what’s his true identity? Faithful to Dick’s ambiguities, Total Recall won’t fully answer either question. This is not to be confused with the 2012 starring Colin Farrell. (R) B.R.M. Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 9-13, 9:30 p.m.

Ongoing

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 If Tobey Maguire was

all open-faced wonder about his accidental arachnid skill set, Andrew Garfield’s more of a brooder—Peter Parker hiding in his room despite the entreaties of Aunt May (Sally Field). He’s given a welcome few goofy grace notes with girlfriend Gwen (Emma Stone), but most of the time we’re watching his masked CG avatar swing seamlessly through Manhattan canyons, not the actual thespian. The dazzling computer effects have advanced so far from the Sam Raimi/Maguire pictures that most viewers won’t even notice the absence.

Everything slowly builds after a zingy first hour to a two-part finale that’s more coded than directed. Where are the actors? No one cares. Neither do Garfield, Stone, their castmates, or director Marc Webb.

Returning from Part I, Webb keeps the tone light,

THRILLING, SPARE AND HEARTBREAKING.” “

-William Goss, MSN MOVIES

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caps the sulking, and limits the inside jokes. The plot and dialogue are elementary—subtitles not required anywhere on the planet. Also worth the 3-D IMAX ticket price is the roster of supporting talent: Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Chris Cooper, Colm Feore, Denis Leary, and Paul Giamatti. Given the money invested in Spidey’s aerial ballets with the camera (totally untethered, as in Gravity), it’s nice to see the budget padded with so many pros. (PG-13) B.R.M. Ark Lodge, Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, Bainbridge, Sundance, others CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Unlike 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, which existed purely to set up Marvel’s 2012 ensemble summit meeting The Avengers, Winter Soldier is actually a movie: It has a story, a subtext, and a few fun pulp surprises along the way. Chris Evans returns to the title role; his cheerful calm is the closest anybody in this cycle has come to summoning Christopher Reeve’s buoyant comic-book presence from the first couple of Supermans. Cap finds his 1940s-era mindset challenged by the surveillance-state approach of a government minister (Robert Redford, cleverly cast), and his existence threatened by the mysterious Cold War–era nasty known as the Winter Soldier. The computer-generated climax will either be tedious or thrilling, depending on your tolerance for the digital battlefield, but there’s something to be said for the movie’s basic competence. (PG-13) ROBERT HORTON Majestic Bay, Sundance, Thornton Place, Bainbridge, others FINDING VIVIAN MAIER The biggest discovery of 20th-century photography was made in 2007 by Chicago flea-market maven/historian John Maloof.

Vivian Maier was a nanny who died soon thereafter, indigent and mentally ill, a hoarder. Maloof bought trunks of her negatives with no idea what they contained. The revelation of those images, in a series of art shows and books, immediately placed her in the front rank of street photographers like Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. But who the hell was she? Now Maloof and Charlie Siskel have directed a kind of documentary detective story about the enigmatic spinster (1926–2009). It’s an irresistible quest, as Maloof interviews the now-grown kids Maier cared for, plus a few fleeting friends and acquaintances, who had no idea of her gifts. Maier was almost pathologically secretive (“sort of a spy,” she said), but all photographers hide behind the camera. Would she have wanted her images seen by the public? Maloof conclusively answers that question. Would she have wanted his movie to be made? All her grown charges say the same: No. (NR) B.R.M. Varsity THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL By the time of its 1968 framing story, the Grand Budapest Hotel has been robbed of its gingerbread design by a Soviet (or some similarly aesthetically challenged) occupier—the first of many comments on the importance of style in Wes Anderson’s latest film. A writer (Jude Law) gets the hotel’s story from its mysterious owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham, a lovely presence). Zero takes us back between world wars, when he (played now

by Tony Revolori) began as a bellhop at the elegant establishment located in the mythical European country of Zubrowka. Dominating this place is the worldly Monsieur Gustave, the fussy hotel manager (Ralph Fiennes, in absolutely glorious form). The death of one of M. Gustave’s elderly ladyfriends (Tilda Swinton) leads to a wildly convoluted tale of a missing painting, resentful heirs, a prison break, and murder. Also on hand are Anderson veterans Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson—all are in service to a project so steeped in Anderson’s velvet-trimmed bric-a-brac we might not notice how rare a movie like this is: a comedy that doesn’t depend on a star turn or a high concept, but is a throwback to the sophisticated (but slapstickfriendly) work of Ernst Lubitsch and other such classical directors. (R) R.H. Guild 45th, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Bainbridge, others JODOROWSKY’S DUNE I don’t believe for one second this documentary’s central claim: Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky’s planned ’70s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is the Rosetta Stone of all subsequent sci-fi, from Star Wars to Alien to The Matrix.

But the irrepressible director, now 85, is the first guy you’d want to invite to a dinner party, no matter how outrageous and unsustainable his tales. Director Frank Pavich tries to recap the chapters of Jodorowsky’s varied career: avant-garde theater in Mexico during the ’60s; midnight-movie success in the ’70s with his head-trips El Topo and The Holy Mountain (both excerpted); and finally Jodorowsky’s ill-fated, Frenchfinanced 1975 attempt at Dune. The renderings and storyboards in Jodorowsky’s 3,000-page illustrated script are amazing; and it’s no surprise to see how his

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he does, with utter confidence, for two and one-half hours. This is far too long by ordinary standards, but not too long if you a) have an appetite for unbridled mayhem, or b) curiosity about the spectacle of a director playing can-you-top-this with himself. On the latter point, Evans frequently succeeds, staging an awe-inspiring car chase, a massive donnybrook in a muddy prison yard, and a climactic hand-to-hand fight in a state-of-the-art kitchen that uses each utensil for maximum effect. (R) R.H. Sundance UNDER THE SKIN Yes, this is the movie where Scarlett Johansson gets naked and—playing an alien huntress cloaked in human skin—lures men to their deaths. Aided by some motorcycle-riding minions, Johansson’s unnamed character is more worker bee than killer, a drone programmed to do one particular thing. This consists of driving around Scotland in a white van, calling out to single men with a posh English accent, then leading them back to her glass-

floored abattoir. In the eerie, affectless Under the Skin, director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) dispenses with suspense or context. Instead we have process, sometimes dull. Johansson’s alien cares only for the body, not the mind, and she’s learned only enough of our language and social protocols to flirt and deceive. Eventually Johansson’s visitor goes rogue, apparently having been inspired to empathy— or maybe just bloodless curiosity—after picking up a disfigured hitchhiker. Under the Skin then becomes a dilatory chase movie, without much action, as her brood tries to return her to the nest. The movie risks tedium to ask an unsettling question about this apex predator: If this she can question her role, consider her apartness from the hive, might she then have a soul? (R) B.R.M. Sundance, Harvard Exit THEATERS: Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 9383456; Ark Lodge, 4816 Rainier Ave. S, 721-3156; Big Picture, 2505 First Ave., 256-0566; Central Cinema,

1411 21st Ave., 686-6684; Cinebarre, 6009 SW 244th St. (Mountlake Terrace)., 425-672-7501; Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6680; Crest, 16505 Fifth Ave. NE, 363-6339; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 5233935; Guild 45th, 2115 N. 45th St., 547-2127; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 323-0587; iPic Theaters, 16451 N.E. 74th St. (Redmond), 425-636-5601; Kirkland Parkplace, 404 Park Place, 425-827-9000; Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N, 425-454-7400; Majestic Bay, 2044 NW Market St., 781-2229; Meridian, 1501 Seventh Ave., 223-9600; Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380; Oak Tree, 10006 Aurora Ave. N, 527-1748; Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 888-262-4386; Seven Gables, 911 NE 50th St., 632-8821; SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996; SIFF Film Center, Seattle Center, 324-9996; Sundance Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 633-0059; Thornton Place, 301 NE 103rd St., 5179953; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 632-6412.

“CHIC, SEXY, IN LOVE AND UNDEADHIDDLEStON AND AND SwINtON SwINtON brINg brINg ImmOrtAL ImmOrtAL HIDDLEStON rt rtAL rOmANCE tO tO JArmUSCH’S JArmUSCH’S DIVINE DIVINE DIrgE.” DIrgE.” rOmANCE -richard Corliss, Corliss,tImE tImE mAgAZINE mAgAZINE -richard

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talented colleagues, some interviewed here, would go on to Hollywood success—sadly leaving their old mentor behind. Pavich’s account is perhaps too insidery and film-geek-detailed, paying homage to this near-forgotten director, but it’s impossible to fault his generosity after such a long draught. Jodorowsky has clearly honed and polished his anecdotes about supposed Dune enlistees, including Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Pink Floyd, and Salvador Dalí. Are any of them true? Does it really matter? Not when the telling is so cheerfully entertaining. (PG-13) B.R.M. Ark Lodge, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Sundance LE WEEK-END If a British couple making a misguided trip to Paris to save their marriage sounds like a clichéd plot, rest assured it’s not. Instead, we meet still-beautiful Meg (Lindsay Duncan) with her sculpted cheekbones and long blonde hair, and Nick (Jim Broadbent), a sweet, goofy-ish philosophy professor who confesses on the trip that he’s just been sacked from his job. From the first scene their dysfunction is evident. s Nick makes one loving overture after another, Meg’s aggravation with him—and downright cruelty—becomes increasingly palpable, even as she tries to check it. (Their push-pull dynamic is expertly rendered by the veteran team of director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi, previous collaborators on The Mother and Venus.) Despite Nick and Meg’s 30-year rut and the loathsome jabs that result, there are exquisite moments of levity. Also here are unexpected moments of passion: a long kiss on the street, an almost discomfiting scene of sexual masochism. The weekend culminates at a posh dinner party thrown by Nick’s old Cambridge buddy, played appropriately neurotically by Jeff Goldblum, where both this marriage’s frailty and its endurance are beautifully, achingly captured. (R) NICOLE SPRINKLE Kirkland Parkplace, Vashon Theatre THE LUNCHBOX In teeming Mumbai, a network of Dabbawallahs delivers hot lunches to desk-bound bureaucrats like Saajan (Irrfan Khan), a lonely widower nearing retirement. His food is commercially cooked, while luckier office workers have wives back home who employ the same Dabbawallah delivery service. Somehow the lunches get switched, regularly, between Saajan and neglected housewife Ila (Nimrat Kaur). What’s worse, her distracted and possibly adulterous husband can’t even taste the difference! She’s hurt and offended, while Saajan is delighted with his misdirected meals. The Lunchbox is the simple story of their accidental epistolary friendship. Saajan and Illa communicate by notes, and nowhere does writer/ director Ritesh Batra seriously suggest his two leads will ever hook up. Nor does a chaste, Brief Encounter– style meeting of the souls seem likely. The Lunchbox merely describes an increasingly hectic, impersonal city, where two kindred spirits crave human connection. (PG) B.R.M. Ark Lodge, Harvard Exit, Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, Sundance, Lynwood (Bainbridge) ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE Jim Jarmusch’s new vampire film is full-bodied and sneaky-funny, a catalog of his trademark interests yet a totally fresh experience. It’s his best work since Dead Man (1995). Eve (Tilda Swinton) is a denizen of Tangier, where she slouches around the atmospheric streets at night.

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) lives in Detroit, where he creates arty rock music and collects guitars. Adam needs Eve, so she joins him for sessions of nocturnal prowling. One does not expect much in the way of plot; and when Eve’s reckless sister (Mia Wasikowska) comes to town, it almost seems like an intrusion. The pace has been so languid and luxurious until then, you might actually resent this suggestion that a story is threatening to break out. Why would vampires need a storyline? They live on without much change or growth, and can’t even look forward to an ending. So Jarmusch’s dilatory style actually suits their world nicely. The timeless vampires seem depressed about what has happened to the world. All one can do is cling to culture and wait out the decline, holding tight to the books and vintage LPs and centuries-old apparel that serve as markers of a better time. (R) R.H. Guild 45th THE RAID 2 Gareth Evans’ sequel to his culty 2011 The Raid: Redemption, which was set primarily within a Jakarta high-rise, considerably widens the canvas this time out. Returning hero Rama (Iko Uwais) has survived that adventure only to be tapped for an undercover operation as unlikely as it is brutal.

He’s spent two years in jail earning the trust of an Indonesian gangster’s son (Arifin Putra), the better to infiltrate the gang when he gets out. The aim is to gain information about police corruption and smash the syndicate, but Evans seems less interested in the intricacies of storytelling than he is in devising one flabbergasting action sequence after another. This

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arts&culture» Music

Live and Local

SevenNights

Look no further than your device for the freshest local music.

E D I T E D B Y G W E N D O LY N E L L I O T T

BY DAVE LAKE

Wednesday, May 7

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

I

32

Qdot performs at the Lively Lounge in SoDo.

The title of EILEN JEWELL’s latest full-length, Queen of the Minor Key, could not be more spot-on. The Boisebased singer’s bluesy vocals, paired with a blend of surf-rock and rockabilly and including lyrics like “I think I see you once in a while/Practice looking like I don’t care,” help her reign over all things morose and melancholy. With JD Hobson. Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave. N.W., 789-3599. 8 p.m. $15. 21 and over.

AZARIA C. PODPLESKY

Thursday, May 8

DREW RICKMAN

f you’ve attended a concert in the past 10 years, you’ve surely noticed that cell phones have become as ubiquitous in the raised hands of showgoers as lighters once were. Unlike lighters, however, which were generally reserved for the dimly lit power-ballad portion of a show, cell phones have become a major nuisance throughout an entire performance, and artists like Beyoncé and the Lumineers have gone so far as to ask attendees to holster their gadgets during a gig.

The upside of video cameras in every audience member’s pocket is plenty of free social-media exposure, but it also means that a blotto bassist can’t pass out and whack his head on the drum riser before the encore without immediately becoming a part of the permanent record (cue Danny Nordahl of Faster Pussycat).

It was exactly this kind of annoyance that led Seattle entrepreneur Dean Graziano to launch Lively. After a sea of cell phones marred his experience at Seattle’s annual Deck the Hall Ball, he set out to develop a service that would make concerts available for download via a mobile app as quickly as possible after a show, allowing fans to take home a professionally recorded copy of the performance (as opposed to a bootleg)—something more personal than a T-shirt or CD. “It’s a better merchandise play, for sure,” Graziano says. “I’d rather have a copy of that experience than a T-shirt. Nowadays a hoodie is like $60. For $10 you can have the whole show and experience it forever.”

The company, which has a large, industrial office in SoDo, is part of a growing trend in music discovery: live and local. If booking an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! or doing a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR is moving the needle for artists nationally, then driving concert ticket and merch sales locally approaches band promotion from the opposite end. It’s a win as much for music fans as it is for artists.

By partnering with Lively, bands record their shows at “enabled” venues—in Seattle, these include the Crocodile and the Showbox, which are set up with Lively’s proprietary recording software—directly from the soundboard. After some quick editing, the band’s sound person can make the songs immediately available via Lively’s smartphone app. With no direct costs beyond that, the content is inexpensive to produce, creating a new revenue stream for acts on out on the road.

“If you’re not touring,” says Graziano,”you’re not making money.” Lively sells audio shows for $4.99 and video performances for $9.99. Artists can chose to sell for more or less, but a typical revenue split is 70 percent for the band, 30 for Lively.

That can translate into real money for bands of all sizes. To date, Alaskan psych rockers Portugal. The Man has made more than $1800 since its show at a New York venue in September.

Georgia band Issues has banked more than $700 from its show at the Showbox in April. These

aren’t monumental figures, but the extra dough can add up quickly, and it’s easy to imagine a future where artists make every show available to fans immediately after. According to Lively, some acts are even doing that now including Boston duo Aer, local The Voice contestant Austin Jenckes, and Portugal. The Man. With poor-quality, unmonetized clips showing up on YouTube the next day anyway, why not?

In Emeryville, Calif., just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, Wayne Skeen was wrestling with a different musical problem. The record-label owner was having trouble getting people out to see his touring bands. His acts were playing major markets, but to limited audiences. If only more people knew they were in town, he thought, they’d definitely go to the show instead of to a movie or dinner.

To solve this problem, he created DeliRadio, which allows listeners to launch stations based around live-music venues in their area. “The consumer, the person who likes to see live music, is just as much at a loss to find that connection as the bands are,” he says.

DeliRadio takes a feed of concert data from bandsintown.com and then contacts the artists directly to secure music from them, generally a couple of songs, which can help bands promote any of their dates. Artists then have access to a dashboard that allows them to add and subtract songs and to see what cities are playing their songs the most and selling the most tickets. The service currently has stations for over two dozen Seattle venues, including the Tractor, El Corazon, the Showbox, and Neumos.

Skeen hopes DeliRadio will lure people away from Pandora and Spotify, where—in addition to commercial-free listening—he can offer something those services can’t: the knowledge that every artist played has an upcoming concert

date in the area. DeliRadio also follows a different business model than those services: Because artists have granted the company promotional use of specific tracks, the service is exempt from paying royalties as others do. Instead, the idea is to monetize via sponsorships, where brands pay to sponsor venue stations, with revenue split between the two.

Lively has a similar approach to monetization.

In addition to taking a percentage of revenue generated by sold concerts, the company offers a range of free content through its app—much of it shot in its ground-floor studio, the Lively Lounge.

Both companies pride themselves on being artist-friendly, which seems to be paying off.

Lively has worked with some bigger artists, including Keith Urban, the Pixies, and Lil Wayne, but DeliRadio’s bread and butter has primarily been the hardworking medium-sized acts who fill the nation’s 2,000 venues each night. There are no Elvis, Sinatra, or Hendrix tracks in either company’s library; “We have living, breathing, working artists and that’s it,” Skeen says. To date, his company has signed up over 13,000 acts.

Though both services have attracted investor attention—DeliRadio has raised about $10 million so far, Lively around $2 million—the biggest challenge for both will be attracting marquee acts, which in turn will allure users. Lively is about to close an A-round of financing, and Graziano says the company is already generating revenue. “The potential and the future is really bright,” he says.

“Live is big and content is king. Streaming services are licensing a catalog; we’re actually creating our own.” E

music@seattleweekly.com

The Lively app is available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone at www.getlive.ly. DeliRadio is available on iOS and Android at deliradio.com.

If the recent spate of beautiful weather has you thinking “beach” but you can’t get away just yet, TY DOLLA $IGN and friends will bring the songs of his Beach House EP series to you. The chill vibe of songs like “My Cabana” conjures images of cookouts, flip-flops full of sand, and fruity umbrella drinks. With Joe Moses, Mila J, Louis V, DJ Swervewon. Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave., 441-4618, thecrocodile.com. 8 p.m. $15 adv. MICHAEL F. BERRY KENNY G has been playing sax since age 10; countless albums later, he is back in his hometown for a four-night stretch. Not only his very successful career precedes him; so do his Seattle origins and his UW graduation, accounting degree in hand. Leaving that world behind, G went on to nab a Grammy, earn a record in the Guinness Book, sell millions of albums in the U.S., and captivate international audiences with his contemporary jazz. But his professional experience and expert technique don’t get in the way of the personality shining through his music. His discography—romantic songs, Christmas music, duets, movie soundtracks, and more—resonates with audiences in a way that, often, only vocalists can. For me, a former sax player, this is most evident when I hear him play “Everything I Do” as a duet with LeAnn Rimes, turning it into a melodramatic piece with an intensified soulful phrasing that exudes a passion not in the original. With Robert Damper, Daniel Bejarano, John Raymond, Vail Johnson. Through Sunday. Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave., 441-9729, jazzalley.com. 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. $54.

LAUREL RICE Canadian singer/songwriter JON BRYANT’s thoughtful and ultimately encouraging content is reminiscent of that of Mumford & Sons. Vocally he treads a spellbinding path somewhere between Bon Iver and Ryan Adams; musically he’s a kissing cousin of Jeff Buckley.

What Takes You is his most recent album, and a new one is forthcoming. With La Commission. Q Cafe, 3223 15th Ave. W., 352-2525, qcafe.org. 7:30 p.m. $10. All ages. BRIAN PALMER

Friday, May 9

DON’T TALK TO THE COPS invited some friends to help

celebrate vocalist and producer djblesOne’s birthday with an infectious mix of highly danceable hip-hop and quirky inside jokes. Better still, they’re the ones giving the gifts: The first 250 people get a limited-edition cereal box full of cool stuff (cereal not included). With OCnotes, Konichiwaack, Them Team, Bobbi Rich, Shorthand. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 324-8005, chopsuey.com. 9 p.m. $10. MFB The relationship between NEEDTOBREATHE’s songwriting team, brothers Bo and Bear Rinehart, deteriorated so badly by the end of 2012 that the band’s future was in real jeopardy. But they came back from the acrimony to deliver what is easily their best album to date, Rivers in the Wasteland, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard Charts last month. With Foy Vance. The Neptune, 1303 N.E. 45th St., 682-1414, stgpresents.org/ neptune. Through Saturday. 8:30 p.m. $29.00. CORBIN REIFF ACOUSTIC FOR OSO To help Oso rebuild, local musicians—including Duff McKagan, the Presidents of the United States of America, Mark Pickerel, Kim Virant, Gary Westlake, and Alessandra Rose, with more scheduled to perform—will donate all this show’s proceeds to the United Way of Snohomish County. The

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

Send events to music@seattleweekly.com.

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NEW FRESH MENU MADE

STARRING

HICKORY SMOKED COMBO JUICY CHICKEN

SOUTHERN STYLE SLOW HARDWOOD SMOKED BLUES-BELTIN’ PERFECTION SERVED WITH FRESH CUT FRIES

RIBS SLATHERED IN SAVORY SAUCE

it Tastes as good as it sounds FIND OUT WHAT ELSE IS PLAYING:

#THISISHARDROCK

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

spicy and tangy MOUTH-WATERING FALL-OFF-THE-BONE TENDER (SLICES OF) DOWN-HOME HEAVEN

33 MAR471AM14_NewMenu_Hickory_Seattle_9.83x11.25.indd 1

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a&c» Music 1303 NE 45TH ST

mainstage

dinner & show

Sam Boshnack Quintet Presents The Nellie Bly Project Friday, May 9

WED/MAY 7 & THU/MAY 8 • 7PM & 9:30PM

cassandra wilson - two-time grammy winner and female jazz vocalist of the year

FRI/MAY 9 • 7:30PM STG, DEBRA HEESCH AND THE TRIPLE DOOR PRESENTS:

A

s Einstein once said, “Energy, rightly applied, can accomplish anything.”

If that statement gave you pause, you’d be right. A journalist named Nellie Bly—not Einstein—famously stated those words.

Nowadays, it’s not as if you’d know, says Seattle composer Samantha Boshnack. “A lot of peo-

acoustic for oso SAT/MAY 10 • 7PM & 10PM

lowrider band

BRUCE TOM

- originators of hits: lowrider, spill the wine, the cisco kid, why can’t we be friends & more!

SUN/MAY 11 • 7:30PM

wishbone ash TUE/MAY 13 • 7:30PM - AMERICAN STANDARD TIME PRESENTS

grant lee phillips and howe gelb WED/MAY 14 • 7:30PM

karla bonoff THU/MAY 15 • 7PM & 10PM

william fitzsimmons

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

w/ ben sollee (7pm only)

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next • 5/16 the beatniks “summer of love” • 5/17 the righteous mothers w/ christine lavin • 5/18 jon batiste and stay human • 5/20 suzanne vega w/ ari hest • 5/21 polly o’keary and the rhythm method/ randy oxford • 5/22 seattle secret music showcase #14 • 5/23 mycle wastman • 5/24 bowievision • 5/25 ramblin’ jack elliott and nell robinson • 5/28 the bgp w/ aijia • 5/29 vicci martinez • 5/30 gypsy soul • 5/31 johnnyswim • 6/1 throwing muses w/ guest tanya donelly • 6/4 judith owen w/ hallstrom • 6/5 siff justin kaufman trio • 6/6 flamenco de raiz • 6/7 dar williams • 6/8 amy g • 6/10 & 11 jack jones

happy hour every day • 5/7 kat koch quartet • 5/8 jose gonzales • 5/9 the djangomatics / mark sexton band • 5/10 jelly rollers • 5/11 tommy wall and the charlatones • 5/12 crossrhythm session • 5/13 singer-songwriter showcase featuring: colin j nelson, casey ruff and rachel towne • 5/14 tekla waterfield w/ rachel audrey price and jesse TO ENSURE THE BEST EXPERIENCE · PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY DOORS OPEN 1.5 HOURS PRIOR TO FIRST SHOW · ALL-AGES (BEFORE 9:30PM)

thetripledoor.net

216 UNION STREET, SEATTLE · 206.838.4333

ple don’t know who she is,” she says. “But there’s fun in her story, and a realness in her story.”

In fact, it sometimes borders on the fantastic.

A turn-of-the-century pioneering investigative journalist, Bly feigned madness to be committed to a women’s lunatic asylum, and shortly after published an expose on the neglect and abuse she experienced as a “patient” there. Writing for The New York World, she embarked on a trip that bested Jules Verne’s fictional account of circumnavigation—Around the World in 80 Days—by eight. She was active in the social issues of the day, writing about the struggles of working women and minority laborers, and developed patents.

Boshnack, who plays trumpet and studied jazz composition at Bard College in New York, first heard about Bly from her dad, himself a journalist. “I was fascinated,” she says.

Though a King County 4Culture grant, she began to pursue a narrative work (something the 32-year-old bandleader hadn’t yet done) with Bly as her subject, examining her life and legacy in a four-part jazz suite: “Early Years,” “Asylum Expose,” “Around the World,” and “Lasting Legacy.”

Since it’s unrecorded—it premieres tonight—I haven’t heard the work. But judging from Boshnack’s latest release—her debut, Exploding Syndrome—it will likely contain elements of salsa, modes of traditional jazz, and a free-wheeling, avant-garde edge—well-suited to what quintet clarinetist Beth Fleenor calls Bly’s “punky irreverence.”

Boshnack says she hopes the composition will attract a new wave of admirers equally in awe of Bly’s accomplishments. “It’s hard enough now,” Boshnack says, of being female and creative in her field. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like 100 years ago, how challenging it was.”

Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., waywardmusic.org. 8 p.m. $5–15.

GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT

2033 6th Avenue (206) 441-9729 jazzalley.com

JAZZ ALLEY IS A SUPPER CLUB

LAO TIZER FEATURING KAREN BRIGGS AND CHIELI MINUCCI TUES, MAY 6 - WED, MAY 7

All-Star World Jazz Rock, 2011 “Jazz Group of the Year” nominee

KENNY G THURS, MAY 8 - SUN, MAY 11

Legendary jazz saxophonist and Seattle legend returns by popular demand!

THE HEADHUNTERS TUES, MAY 13 - WED, MAY 14

Redefining modern funk, world music and jazz one of the most innovative groups in history

THE FAMILY STONE THURS, MAY 15 - SUN, MAY 18

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees & legendary funkateers!

BALLARD HIGH SCHOOL JAZZ BANDS / VOCAL JAZZ PERFORMANCE MON, MAY 19

in This Bring T And ge n o p Cou Tizer e p p A one 2 oFF! For 1/

Recognized as one of the best jazz band & vocal jazz programs in the nation!

all ages | free parking full schedule at jazzalley.com

early bird tickets on sale now!

musicfestnw.com/tickets

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

SAtUrDAY girl tAlk + phANtogrAm rUN the jewelS + fUtUre iSlANDS mAN mAN + gArDeNS & villA thUNDercAt + ShY girlS+ lANDlADY SUNDAY SpooN + hAim + tUNe-YArDS fUckeD Up + the ANtlerS piNk moUNtAiNtopS + emA moDerN kiN + the DiStrictS

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arts&culture» Music » FROM PAGE 32 Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.net.

7:30 p.m. $35 general/$40 DOS/$50 VIP. All ages. ACP If the opportunity to shimmy while fuzzed-out indiepop quartet CUMULUS plays songs from its debut album, I Never Meant It to Be Like This, wasn’t reason enough to make it to this show, knowing that proceeds will benefit the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, which offers a college program at the Washington Correction Center for Women, will hopefully do the trick. With Fauna Shade, the Female Fiends. Vera Project, 305 Warren Ave. N., 956-8372, theveraproject.org. 7:30 p.m. $7 adv./$8 DOS. All ages. ACP

Saturday, May 10

TACOMA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FAREWELL TO CONDUCTOR HARVEY FELDER The maestro has

spent 20 years transforming the TSO from a community orchestra to a high-level professional ensemble.

Saturday’s concert will be his last with the orchestra before passing the baton to new music director Sarah Ioannides. The program includes works by Roberto Sierra, Liszt, and Mahler. Broadway Center

Rodrigo y Gabriela Sunday, May 11

36

odrigo y Gabriela’s guitar-strumming genius defies description. Imagine mini–Cirque du Soleil acrobats careening down the fretboard of an acoustic guitar—that only begins to describe the superhuman dexterity of the duo’s fingers.

Improbably, such heavenly digits started out shredding in the Mexican heavy-metal scene. In the early 2000s, Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero branched out to busk on the streets of Dublin, their rock aesthetic tempered by flamenco and classical influences. After years of honing their craft around the globe, they get enough sound out of their instruments to fill in for an entire pit orchestra, achieving a playing style that more resembles an Olympic sport.

The duo’s self-titled debut album displays their rock roots in acoustic covers of Metallica’s “Orion” and the ubiquitous “Stairway to Heaven.” But each song is layered with fanciful departures, from country-Western bridges to portions that sound as if they were scored for a Shakespearean tragedy. Since then, the versatile twosome has released another album, 11:11, and contributed heavily to the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides soundtrack (including the devilish “bell-tolling” intro of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard.)

In their latest album, 9 Dead Alive (which dropped April 28), Rodrigo y Gabriela sought to provide a more intimate experience. “As if me and Rod were in your living room,” explains Quintero in a YouTube interview.

Wanting to strip down to their “two guitars, one sound” trademark, each track pays tribute to historical figures who continue to influence the 21st century, from the 10th century’s Eleanor of Aquitaine (a noted historical badass) to the more recently departed Viktor Frankl.

Sanchez said that the new songs have no Latin influence and are pure rock—and there’s nothing wrong with an evolving sound.

Removing the flamenco flavor, however, somehow translated into less variation in the tempos’ topography. Previously fragile elements are sacrificed for an edgier, consistently fast-paced tone. 9 Dead Alive will still make its listeners borderline obsessive, but without as many hypnotic interludes to give their heart rates a break.

An evening with the pair coaxing eargasmic guitar porn out of their instruments should probably be an 18-and-over event, but, luckily

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

R

for the Performing Arts, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253591-5890, broadwaycenter.org. 7:30 p.m. $19–$77.

MFB Siblings Georgia and Caleb Nott, aka BROODS, have come a long way since winning a small talent show in their native New Zealand with an acoustic KT Tunstall cover in 2010. Since then the pair has discovered synthesizers, signed to Capitol Records, toured with fellow sibling band Haim, and released a self-titled EP, featuring the electro-pop single “Bridges.” With Meg Myers. Barboza, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9951, thebarboza.com. 7 p.m. $10. 21 and over. ACP By now it’s tired commentary to point out that Weezer went downhill after its first two albums. Really, who cares? Though the band already played a nostalgia tour in 2011, fans set on reliving the glory years of The Blue Album can do so tonight with tribute group WEEZUS for the album’s 20th anniversary. Resisting change never sounded so upbeat and quirky. With Goat Reward. The Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave., 441-4618, thecrocodile.com. 7 p.m. $5. All ages. DUSTY HENRY If you like your music moody and atmospheric and your vocals sexy but without unnecessary vamping, then San Francisco indie rocker DOE EYE is someone you need to get hip to. 2012’s Hotel Fire EP was a

for budding guitar aficionados of the Pacific Northwest, this show is all-ages. With Zach Heckendorf. The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 6821414, stgpresents.org/paramount. 7 p.m. $41.25.

JENNA NAND

99 $11 D C

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Childish Gambino

Sarah McLachlan

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Ziggy Marley

Tech N9ne

Fly Rasta

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99 $11 CD

Chiodos

Bobby Bare Jr.

In-Store Performance at our SoDo store Sun. May 11 at 12pm. Chiodos will be playing later that evening at El Corazon.

Undefeated is BBJ’s rst release since 2010 and what he calls his “break-up record,” but the whole of it is much more involved: this isn’t escapism; it’s an emotional survival guide.

Devil

Undefeated

Seattle

2930 1st Ave S (206) 283-3472

Northgate

9560 1st Ave NE (206) 524-3472

Bellevue

Crossroads Mall (425) 643-3472

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

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37

arts&culture» Music NTw.RlitYtlereMdhUenS.coICm LIVE COUww THURS MAY 8TH

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SUN MAY 11TH

Join us in the Trophy Room for Happy Hour: Thursday Bartender Special 8-Close Fridays: 5-8pm

HONKY TONKERS 9PM - $3 COVER 4PM OPEN MIC ACOUSTIC JAM W/ BODACIOUS BILLY

RESERVE THE TROPHY ROOM FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT!

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JERKELS 9PM - NO COVER

MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY

KARAOKE WITH DJ FORREST GUMP 9:00PM • NO COVER

FREE COUNTRY DANCE LESSONS WITH OUR HOST MARY ANN AT 8PM; SUN, MON, TUES

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El Corazon www.elcorazonseattle.com

109 Eastlake Ave East • Seattle, WA 98109 Booking and Info: 206.262.0482

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7

SIIINES

with 1967, Follies & Vices, Blicky and Adventures In Wonderland Lounge Show. Doors at 7:30 / Show at 8PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $8 ADV / $10 DOS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7

TOTAL CHAOS with Act Of Sabotage, 13 Scars, SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

The Triple Sixes and No Buffer Lounge Show. Doors at 7 / Show at 7:30PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $10 ADV / $12 DOS

38

FRIDAY, MAY 9

Monster Concerts Presents:

Pagan Fest V featuring:

KORPIKLAANI with Turisas, Chthonic,

Varg, Winterhymn and Blood And Thunder Doors at 5 / Show at 5:15PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $22 ADV / $25 DOS

SATURDAY, MAY 10 KISW (99.9 FM) Metal Shop & El Corazon Present:

PRIMAL FEAR

with Skelator, Last Bastion, Blood Of Kings and Gunslinger Doors at 7 / Show at 7:30PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $18 ADV/$20 DOS/$55 VIP

SUNDAY, MAY 11 Mike Thrasher Presents: SHOWROOM STAGE: CHIODOS with Emarosa,

Hands Like Houses, Our Last Night & 68

LOUNGE STAGE: NIGHTMARES with PVRIS,

Alive Like Me, plus guests. Doors at 6 / Show at 6:30PM. ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $17ADV/$20DOS

MONDAY, MAY 12

TRAPDOOR SOCIAL

with Calliope Musicals, Calico, Alex Menne, plus guests Lounge Show. Doors at 7 / Show at 7:30PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $8 ADV / $10 DOS

TUESDAY, MAY 13

ONE WAY SYSTEM with Mass Terror, Sledgeback (10 Year Anniversary Show), Red White And Die, plus guests Doors at 7 / Show at 7:30PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $10 ADV / $12 DOS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 14

CHRYSALIS with Alive And Well, plus guests

Lounge Show. Doors at 7 / Show at 7:30PM ALL AGES/BAR W/ID. $8 ADV / $10 DOS

JUST ANNOUNCED 5/17 PLAGUE 6/5 MICHALE GRAVES 6/12 LOUNGE VISITORS 6/14 MONETA 6/17 LOUNGE DONOVAN WOLFINGTON 6/20 LOUNGE WUSSY 6/21 LOUNGE FEA 6/28 LOUNGE KEPI GHOULIE 7/13 DWARVES / THE QUEERS 7/21 TRAGEDY AMONGST THE STARS 7/27 MOURNING MARKET 8/10 AIR SEX WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 8/22 & 8/23 THE LAYNE STALEY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WEEKEND AT THE OFF RAMP 10/9 PRONG UP & COMING 5/15 MIKE TRAMP (WHITE LION) 5/16 SPORICYDE 5/16 LOUNGE EVERYONE DIES IN UTAH 5/17 LOUNGE THE HOONS 5/18 NEW YOUNG PONY CLUB 5/19 LOUNGE THE FRONT 5/20 ARCHITECTS / LETLIVE. 5/22 LOUNGE EARLY MAN / WITCHBURN Tickets now available at cascadetickets.com - No per order fees for online purchases. Our on-site Box Office is open 1pm-5pm weekdays in our office and all nights we are open in the club - $2 service charge per ticket Charge by Phone at 1.800.514.3849. Online at www.cascadetickets.com - Tickets are subject to service charge

The EL CORAZON VIP PROGRAM: see details at www.elcorazon.com/vip.html and for an application email us at info@elcorazonseattle.com

nice fusion of alternative and jazz; her first fulllength, T E L E V I S I O N, came out April 29. With the Spider Ferns, Nouela, Raven Zoe. High Dive, 513 N. 36th St., 632-0212, highdiveseattle.com. 9 p.m. $8/ adv./$10 DOS. 21 and over. BP In a world where one of the most successful rappers in the game is a Canadian former teen-soap-opera star, it’s odd how dismissed Donald Glover gets under his CHILDISH GAMBINO MC moniker. The former Community star hit the rap scene with 2011’s panned self-produced Camp, the biggest criticism being the rapper’s acting career. 2013’s ambitious Because the Internet surpassed that, including a multimedia screenplay and an intricate social-media campaign. Glover isn’t concerned with competing for street cred—it’s clear he has none. Instead, he’s taking on issues like self-doubt and a generation that defines self-worth through Tweets and Instagram photos drenched in Nashville filters. A few years ago it would have seemed unimaginable for a mainstream rapper to drop lines like “It was awkward as fuck/I could not get it up.” Gambino isn’t redefining the genre, he’s just voicing himself honestly—an idea that, thanks to recent tracks by Rick Ross and Lil Wayne that incited a renewed focus on rap lyrics, is really taking hold. Because the Internet represents the LiveJournal generation grown up; it’s a confessional, self-deprecating piece that has no need to front. The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $31.25. 8 p.m. All ages. DH Most 23-year-olds are still trying to figure out what their dreams are, but unlike them, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist SARAH JAROSZ is already achieving hers and actively seeking new ones. The Austin-based bluegrass artist has already released three albums, including 2013’s Build Me Up From Bones; been nominated for two Grammy Awards; received raves from national media outlets; and performed with the likes of Alison Krauss and Chris Thile of Nickel Creek. Ponder that for a minute. So what’s all the fuss about? On Bones all you need do is check out the dusky, almost ominous guitar strains of the Americana-tinged “Over the Edge” and revel in the driving bluegrass rhythms of “Fuel the Fire” and its full, soaring vocals. If you aren’t sold by those, then the echoing, otherworldly, mandolin-led title track will live up to the hype.

Tractor Tavern. 9 p.m. $20. 21 and over. BP On its latest, Too Much Information, British alt-rock quintet MAXÏMO PARK mix moody moments (“Midnight on the Hill”), guitar-heavy jams (My Bloody Mind”), and electronic features (“Brain Cells”). There’s an element of surprise to the album; listeners don’t exactly know what to expect next, but it’s that diversity that makes Information such an engaging listen. With Eternal Summers. The Crocodile. 8 p.m. $16. All ages. ACP OTEP’s front woman, Otep Shamaya, and her snarling singing style have been described as Marilyn Manson meets Kim Gordon. A feminist icon in the male-dominated genre of nu-metal, she isn’t afraid to go GRRR. In response to accusations of misandry for her song “Menocide,” Shamaya said that she’s an “equal-opportunity dispenser of rage.”

With Wayne Static, Dope, Smile Empty Soul, Thira, Vanishing Affair, Darklight. Studio Seven. 6 p.m. $25 adv./$27 DOS. All ages. DIANA M. LE MARY LAMBERT, LA LUZ, AND STAR ANNA Invite some friends to hear the first ladies of Seattle song together under one roof, and to help the victims of the Oso landslide in the process. Lit mag The Monarch Review assembled the all-star lineup; it hopes to raise at least $10,000 through the concert, which will be donated to the Cascade Valley Hospital Association. Tractor Tavern. 8 p.m. $25. MFB

Tuesday, May 13

Singer/songwriter PRISCILLA AHN lets her voice do the work. Over stripped-down acoustic tracks, ukuleles included, Ahn commands each one with her rich and syrupy vocal timbre. She’s not an eightoctave diva belting her heart out; instead she opts for a warm and comforting steady pace, perfect for melting her audience’s hearts into sticky goo.

Columbia City Theater, 4916 Rainier Ave. S., 7223009, columbiacitytheater.com. 8 p.m. $15 adv./$18 DOS. 21 and over. DH From the ’90s to today—despite always being on the cusp of success—GRANT LEE PHILLIPS has continued to release album after album of gut-wrenching Americana. His baritone rumbles mournfully over rich acoustic-guitar tones; a distinctly American storyteller, he recounts tales of the country’s landscape and his own personal demons.

With Howe Gelb. The Triple Door. 7:30 p.m. $17.50 adv./$20 DOS. All ages. DH

LocaLReLeases

Bleachbear, Lost Parade (out now, self-released, bleachbear.bandcamp.com/album/lost-parade) An all-girl family band comprising 15-year-old Tigerlily Cooley on vocals and guitar, her 14-year-old sister Bird on drums, and their 14-year-old cousin Emiko on bass, Bleachbear will hit you with its heartwarming earnestness. The band plays self-described dream pop and indie folk that recalls the likes of the Dum Dum Girls and The Head and the Heart. The girls recorded Lost Parade, their debut, amid homework, extracurricular activities, and the drama that sometimes comes with being a teen girl. Within its eight songs, singer/songwriter Tigerlily turns the poignancy of being 15 into something productive, progressing along a narrative arc that tackles everything from unrequited love to . . . lost love (it’s all that matters, anyway). The upbeat “Down by the Forest” depicts two young lovers running away together a la Moonrise Kingdom. The album closes with the somber “Stop Holding On,” a track that captures the sad and beautiful pain of falling out of love. What Lost Parade succeeds at best is creating a mood—one that takes the listener back to a time of butterflies, first kisses, and note-passing. With this debut, these precocious teen girls display a command not only of their middle and high school AP courses (a fact confirmed by family member Paul Rich, who produced the record), but of a distinctive musicality as well. DIANA M. LE Chad VanGaalen, Shrink Dust (out now, Sub Pop, subpop.com) Shrink Dust is a country record.

There’s lap steel guitar all over the place, and VanGaalen croons longingly about how “last night I weighed my sin” and how he’s gotten “hung on Lila,” one of the many mysterious lady muses he’s written about over his career. Alongside the lap steel and harmonica are kraut-rock freakouts— like the blissful motorik beat of “Where Are You?”, in which VanGaalen screams the title in a wash of reverb like an astronaut suddenly cut loose from his spaceship. Those turned off by the shift to the softer country vibe here will quickly find solace in the fact that this is still the weird, morphing, Technicolor universe VanGaalen’s treated us to for years.

He recently erected a giant grinning monster head on the roof of his home in Alberta so the kids at the nearby children’s hospital could look out at it. A father of two, he also recently started an improvised hardcore band with his children, called Crocodile Teeth & the Snugglers. That childlike world of animation, grinning monsters, and imagination is as radiant as ever on Dust, which is replete with tunes like “Monster,” something the Wiggles might have written if they’d just done a bunch of acid.

Don’t let the lap steel fool you—these are space cowboys, and they will guide you through the Wild West of a ceaselessly creative mind. KELTON SEARS

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SEATTLE WEEKLY • MAY 7 — 13, 2014

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