Fake Problems, Pomegranates, Laura Stevenson and Pretty Old at the Vera Project, 4-26-11

Jaime was raving about Laura Stevenson and the Cans on Facebook, she knew some band members from when she lived in the NE, so at the last minute I talked Dana in to heading down to the Seattle Center with the cameras and headed over to the Vera after work.

Nobody had volunteered to steer, so I ended up steering and helping out a bit after a late start - the doors were already open. Pretty Old took the stage before Dana got there, so my only camera was my cell phone.

They did a short set including a nice cover of something obscure - so I didn't recognize it and don't remember the name. Good sound, interesting songs, unfortunately I didn't get anything recorded.

Laura Stevenson and the Cans was next and Dana showed up in time for me to use the better cameras.

Laura Stevenson has an excellent voice, and the band mostly played with 2 guitar, bass, drum and accordion lineup which gave the songs a full sound. She can wail on the vocals and emote strongly so the voice tended to be front and center and with her charisma she carried the songs off and sang beatifully while making it all look easy.

The band was tight and fun, the music and the vocals both had wonderful dynamics and soaring climaxes, excellent set.
Next up was the Pomegranates. Unfortunately I had the camera on the wrong setting so the photos are blurred, this is about as good as the photos get:

Fun upbeat rock sound, waves of fuzzing guitars and overlapping vocals giving a wonderful feel to the whole thing in this video:

Pomegranates had quite a few fun upbeat rock numbers in their 40 minute set.

I got a phopto of them with the 2 girls who were up dancing during the Pomegranates set, they dedicated a song to them and posed out in the lobby after their set:

Fun band, good audience enthusiasm added to the "glow" of the live performance.

Fake Problems took the stage for the headline set.

Good guitar oriented straight ahead rock and roll, good dual vocal approach, good songs and appealing performances.

Talented band with an interesting vibe, combining an assortment of older American rock music styles into something uniquely their own.
They put on an energetic performance well into the night, bouncing around and kicking out great modern yet timeless sounding rock and roll tunes, keeping the audience engaged and having a good time on a cold Spring night.

Update: a couple of sites like KXRX EXtreme Rock Seattle and Rewrite the Scene provide links to Casey Lee's tumblr site here, explaining that he is Fake Problems, I suppose that means he's the singer songwrite behind them; poking around on his tumplr site, I found a picture; I suppose he could be the singer/guitarist, I can't tell for sure. In the other hand Creative Loafing's Daily Loaf credits Chris Farren as the front man, so I'm probably misinterpreting the reference.

City Beat in Cincinnati has a link to a free Pomegranates tune here, which requires an e-mail address.

There's also a downloadable copy (and an embedded copy, for that matter) of Coriander by Pomegranates at My Spoonful as well.

Laura Stevenson has an album available for free download at Totally Fuzzy.