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Listings are
in the opposite order of appearance: headliner is listed at the top,
next is the support band(s),
and the last band listed is the opener.
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Thursday
March 9 2023 7:30PM doors -- music at 8:00PM ••• ALL AGES $15 in advance / $17 at the door Noise Pop presents: Enumclaw www.facebook.com/EnumclawBand/ grunge indie rock Nitefire www.instagram.com/nitefire_/ power pop Wanda What wandawhat.bandcamp.com/ dream pop bedroom rock. Enumclaw -from Tacoma, WA -“I wanna wake up brand new” Enumclaw lead-singer/guitarist Aramis Johnson sings to begin Save the Baby, their massive-sounding debut full-length, out October 14th via Luminelle Recordings. The album is a swing for greatness; a collection of life-affirming and deeply personal songs about the importance of chasing after your dreams. Not since Nirvana irrevocably changed the rock music scene over two decades ago has there been such unequivocal excitement for a band from the South Puget Sound. Enter Tacoma, WA’s Enumclaw, whose early singles “Fast N All” and “Free Drop Billy” conjured a swirl of breathless praise from fans and choice publications like Pitchforkand The Faderbefore striking a single note in front of a live crowd. Even though they hail from the home of grunge, their influences stretch a bit further; the group is already well on their way to becoming “the best band since Oasis,” their earliest motto. Aramis says the band led by the Gallagher brothers is a clear inspiration, given their rise from a working-class background, and not just because his own brother is in the group as well. Says Aramis, “In the lineage of rock, Oasis is the last band to go from some random dive bar toa stadium. And if we’re not selling out stadiums, we’re not doing it how I wanted to do it.” The emotional stakes of being a massively popular rock band are incredibly clear for Enumclaw who came from a modest and sometimes harrowing upbringing in Seattle’s sister city, Tacoma.Aramis describes Tacoma as an inescapable component of the band’s identity. “I honestly thought I was going to move to New York last April,” he says. “I was gonna take a break from doing music stuff, to live in a big city and try becoming a photographer. But the band [and its growing profile] ended up keeping me here in Tacoma.”His father passed away from sickle cell anemia when he was just 10-years-old, his mother walked for miles to a job at Subway, and his family subsisted on food provided by EBT cards. His best friend when he was younger was diagnosed with schizophrenia. “I feel like if I were the one who had gotten sick, he would have handled it better than I did,” he says, the aforementioned survivor’s guilt heavy in his voice. Those personal experiences heavily color Save the Baby, titled for the dreams he’s preserved since he was a young child to make a mark on the world. It’s an album about the importance of following your dreams, in spite of romantic relationships going sour and the pressure that comes with being a young Black man who grew up with a fair share of hardships, and about the importance of following your dreams. On the second verse of “Park Lodge,” Aramis sings about the survivor’s remorse of a friend’s mental health deteriorating as his own rock music stardom was on the ascent. “It’s about the feeling of being stuck in Tacoma,” he says. “Just like a lot of people in the Black community feel like they have to make it out through sports or rapping, I have to make it out with the band. I feel like this is our and the band’s only option to do something in a real way with our lives.” Enumclaw is Aramis, guitarist Nathan Cornell, drummer Ladaniel Gipson, bassist (and Aramis’ younger brother) Eli Edwards. Working alongside producer Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, Crumb, Fleet Foxes), Enumclaw'sSave the Baby delivers an album whereon each track the band playswith dynamics while taking their songwriting to the stratosphere. The grinding guitar on lead single “2002” is no match for Aramis’ soaring chorus, while the music of “Jimmy Neutron” evokes the romantic, wind-swept feeling he sings about propelled by an instantly memorable riff. “Cowboy Bepop” feels like a ripcord letting loose and flapping behind a car on a joyride.The opening self-titled track is divided by a valley of murky haze, sending the uptempo rock of its first movement into the lighters-up moment of its closing section, all thunder and heft. Aramis exclaims his satisfaction with the take before the recording abruptly cuts off, the first in a series of earnest insights into the joy of getting to achieve the band’s ambitions. On “10th and J 2,” a striking, pulsating rock song tinged with melancholy, Aramis sings of destiny, something he believes in greatly. “It really felt like it was my last shot to make it out of here, from a mental perspective, from a career perspective,” he says about writing and recording Save the Baby. As he plays the chords of “Apartment” on acoustic guitar, he sings, “Hey! You’ve got one last chance! / Why not give it all that you can?” It’s essentially a letter to himself, a reminder to put his all into pursuing a childhood dream. For himself, for his loved ones, for all the people he’s known who never made it out of the cycle of trauma. Save the Babyis an album about stepping into your purpose, about the determination it takes to not give up on yourself in the midst of heartbreak and setbacks. It’s not a stretch to imagine a younger version of the band getting a glimpse of the future and freaking out by knowing their destiny of making it as a rock star has landed on their doorstep. —Martin Douglas Nitefire -from New York, NY/Los Angeles, CA -High school nostalgia led old friends Nico Geyer and Luke White to create their project, Nitefire. The Los Angeles duo captures 80's nostalgia while taking on a fresh and modern feel on songwriting and instrumentation. Their single "Ride Or Die" channels a special kind of atmospheric pop. The duo have already taken their sounds to new heights gaining over 20k streams on Spotify alone. With more music rumored to be on the way, we can expect the duo to do huge numbers in the months to follow.. Wanda What -from San Francisco, CA -Wanda What is the solo project of Harmony Reynolds (of Heavenly Bother). Based out of San Francisco, California, the project is a slight departure from Reynolds’ previous work, creating a new sound with dynamic musical accompaniment along with moving lyrics and theme. While the project may have a new sound, it still maintains the fun, upbeat hooks that Reynolds has become well known for. |
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