Music I Liked – Regional Justice Center, Brent Cowles, Cave Singers

In a broad sense, the music I liked last week was all about politics. Albums by Regional Justice Center, Brent Cowles, and the Cave Singers examined local issues and evolving worldviews, and had me thinking about community.

Regional Justice Center

I like everything about punk except the sound. Punk, hardcore, powerviolence – they pretty much all sound the same to me. As undifferentiated as the cvltest black metal, except less enjoyable to listen to. But every now and then I run across some hardcore that stands out. Last week it was HARAM, the Arabic-language punk outfit playing Pickathon this year. This week the Bandcamp Daily introduced me to Regional Justice Center.

I’m a sucker for backstory, and even though RJC doesn’t stray from the hardcore formula, their story grabbed me. The band is named for a courthouse and jail in the county where I live and the album World of Inconvenience deals with the artist’s experience of his 18-year-old brother’s entanglement with the corporate prison system. The RJC received an $8.5 million dollar remodel during they years that I worked for King County (in a different agency) and our community is currently engaged in a protracted and heated battle over whether to spend money on a new youth jail or on programs to break the school to prison pipeline. So World of Inconvenience hit a little closer to home than the average punk album.

Brent Cowles

You can’t even imagine how much I loved the band You Me and Apollo, even if you read my post about seeing them the first time at Doe Bay (I didn’t blog the second time I saw them at Doe Bay), or in a super-cool secret loft show on Capitol Hill. Not even if you read about the epiphany I had about coolness while listening to an interview with their singer Brent Cowles or the time I got nostalgic after they broke up.

In a way though, they were a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Their songs were all old-school honkey tonk, full of the ache that believing in sin causes when sin is just another word for human. My mind’s eye rolled at the moral weight given to sexual purity and beverage choices. But it was still the perfect soundtrack for drinking alone.

When I heard a new single from Brent Cowles on KEXP I pulled the car over and immediately looked it up on Bandcamp. Kevin Cole said there was a new album, but all I could find on Bandcamp was the EP from last year. A week or so later, I found How To Be Okay Alone on Google Play. The fallen Christian themes had faded, but the album is still good for instant heartbreak.

Cave Singers

You know another band I obsessed over? Cave Singers. But somehow I kind of missed their last album, and I was only reminded of it when they played a surprise set at the Ballard Seafood Fest a week ago. It really got me thinking about how lucky I am to live in a community where bands this good play free neighborhood festivals. So I went back and spent some time listening to Banshee.