Paper Planes

Ladies and Gentlemen, please mark your calendars: On the evening of Thursday, February 18th, at the famed Comet Tavern on Seattle’s storied Capitol Hill, my pal Sean Robinson’s band Landlord’s Daughter will debut their third studio album, entitled No One’s Looking, at 9 o’clock PM. I hold the tangential distinction of having produced the album’s artwork (some of which you can see in the last two posts) and I’d like to encourage folks to come to the concert and/or buy the album since it’s one of the coolest projects with which I’ve been associated.

Landlord’s Daughter has been carefully preparing this little sonic gem (you can hear four of the tracks online here) for about a year now, and it’s a nuanced listening pleasure. The album barrels out of the gates with the frantically manic “Srebrenitza of the Wolves”, but it’s not long before the flirtatious exuberance has slipped off, and the soundscapes of the later songs become much darker. There are moments of tenderness, humor, and joy throughout No One’s Looking, but nothing is as it seems and none of the thirteen tracks are far removed from a dreamlike sense of uncertainty. Landlord’s Daughter has some serious musical chops, (The better to eat you with, my dear!) and it’s alarming when you realize just how easily they’ve used these skills to charm you into the album’s more threatening material. It’s your childhood friend again with his dangerous schemes and ideas which somehow all became yours when it turned out that someone was watching – perhaps the album’s title is alluding to his dubious promise? And perhaps I’m making No One’s Looking sound overly devious, (make no mistake, it’s full of deception, threats, and sadistic twists) but like that childhood friend, it’s also fully capable of remorse, intimate confidence, and moments of unprompted compassion. Sometimes funny, sometimes wistful, on occasion cruel, No One’s Looking never forgets to include you in its schemes, and you’ll find yourself missing your accomplice when it’s all over.

Anyway, you should take a listen, attend the concert opening if you can, or maybe even buy the album when it becomes available (I’ll post). It’s terrific stuff.