Sound Off! 2008 Lineup Announced!

Yesterday The EMP announced the lineup for their annual Sound Off! event which takes place every February. Many great bands have come out of this competition, including recent participants Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, and Sound Off! Legends like Mon Frere, Schoolyard Heroes and Dyme Def.

Typically, there is one really great group that comes out of Sound Off! every year, but I think this crop may have two or three potential future stars.

I really like The Nextdoor Neighbors and their strange minimal conversational indie rock. They sound very Olympia. Check out their Myspace Next Door Neighbors

The 2008 Sound Off! also features two pretty great, old-school influenced hip-hop acts. Scribes is a good friend of The Vera Project – who is working on something great here at Vera in early February. Both of these hip-hop acts were at Vera for an awesome hip-hop show, definitely the best local hip-hop show all year. I do have some criticism for EMP for putting both of the hip-hop acts (and Nextdoor Neighbors are a little hip-hop influenced) so that there can’t be more than one hip-hop group in the finals.

Another group I’m really interested in is New Faces from Port Townsend. I heard about this young group two years back when I met one of their moms at a concert and they were called “Captain Incognito.” They play the kind of angular guitar rock which seemed to be coming out England a few years ago. Here they are back in May, with the full lineup below:

Saturday, February 9: Semifinals #1
The Batteries
The Dead Are Judged
New Faces
Southgate

Saturday, February 16: Semifinals #2
KnowMads
The Nextdoor Neighbors
Pat Goodwin
Scribes

Saturday, February 23: Semifinals #3
Deer City
Kusikia
Man Down Medic
Shotty

- Tristan Pelton