What I'm Listening To, 2025.2.24

I went to a punk show weekend before last. For the first time in over a decade, I was roughly the median age. That's what I get for going to a show sponsored by KEXP, it seems to bring out an older crowd. The show was at Clock-Out Lounge in South Seattle, a new venue for me. They ran the show well, and the place seemed cool. It is a throwback to the kind of working class bar that doesn’t really exist in Seattle North of Beacon Hill anymore.

I was there for Itchy Kitty, one of my favorite Spokane local bands. They’d come across the state to support the headliner, Dead Pioneers. They were middle of the bill, but they stole the show. They did a cover of Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" that was perfectly unhinged. The band just chugged along as Naomi Eisenbrey lost her mind onstage. It was a perfect blend of calculated jam and divine psychosis. And, thanks to a different kind of unhinged lunatic (the kind who watches punk shows through their phone camera), I can give you a glimpse of the experience:

(You can probably hear me holler in the crowd noise from this recording, which is unfortunate. I regret having been perceived by my readers and will endeavor not to do so in the future.)

As is often the case when I see a live show that electric, I've been listening to their music non-stop this week. So I'm just going to double up and insist you listen to "Stray" off of their excellent album Mr. Universe:

It's weird and frenetic enough to satisfy something in me that is harder and harder to sate as time goes on. It’s one of those songs that you hear for the first time and it’s just trying to do something just different enough that you have to sit up and take notice. It’s got a menacing edge to it that’s completely out of step with the lyrics, but completely inline with the vibe of the band.

When I listen to music at work, I usually need it to be lyric-free. I'm usually either writing technical documentation or code and I get easily distracted from either if I have legible words coming in my ears. The only exception I make is for pounding music sung in languages I don't speak. This means I sometimes find myself listening to Japanese punk, including the Blue Hearts.

The other day, the Algorithm took me on a bit of a wander and before I knew it, I had discovered that MxPx had done a cover of the their track "Linda, Linda". Honestly it holds up. They maintain both the urgency and the earnestness of the original.

(Later exploration lead me to the discovery that Me First and the Gimme Gimmes also did a cover, but it's a laid-back, half-ska abomination not worth listening to.)

For educational comparison, here's the original:

Hiroto Kōmoto has a punk charisma that transcends cultural and language barriers. Truly punk as fuck, not matter if you understand the lyrics or not. Raw, urgent, paranoid energy is a universal language.