BLACKBIRD RECOMMENDS: JESSE SYKES AND THE SWEET HEREAFTER WEDNESDAY, DEC. 7th AT NEUMO'S

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter are playing tomorrow night (Wednesday, Dec. 7th) at Neumo's and you should go. They are one of Seattle's most original and haunting bands and have spent the last ten years honing their sound into the feral vagabond juggernaut that it is today.

As these live clips from a recent session with our friends at KEXP attest to, they are very much a live band and have spent much of this year touring and promoting their latest release, Marble Son, a true testament to their ability and craft if there ever was one. The singularly dark and enigmatic vocals of Sykes along with the murky, bluesy brilliance of Phil Wandscher's guitar weave vibrant tapestries of introspective disillusionment and deliverance, longing and arrival.

In the past they've teamed up with Japanese doom experimentalists Boris and the cloven brethren that is Sunn 0))) (last year's throw down with all three bands at the Jim Jarmusch curated Brooklyn Masonic Temple gig was one of the best shows I've ever seen, period) and have even put music to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. But what really sets this quartet apart is the music. This is an organic and visceral band of players. Their meaningful, hard to forget songs are sewn together with honesty, integrity, a swooning backbeat, an earthy thrum, and a healthy dose of true feedback mastery. With that, be there tomorrow night.