Yeah, we dig the fez at Lushy central…and so we bring to you the first in a series of items from the Lushy lifestyle store–the Lushy fez t-shirt in various colors, sizes, mens and womens made of the finest cotton threads for a mere $15. Now available at shows !!! Our newest design was created by our friend Robin Best at Electra Schwartz and pulled by master printer Steve over at Primal Screens.
TIG article The cool, cocktail party pop of Lushy Photo by Ivan Lasso
http://threeimaginarygirls.com/contentfeatures/2010jan/lushy
The cool, cocktail party pop of Lushy
For a decade now, Lushy has quietly been making some of the coolest and catchiest music to come out of the Northwest. Their sound and aesthetic immediately brings to mind retro, cocktail parties but with more international influences. You hear elements of swing, jazz, bossa nova and whatever the music was in Bond films back when Sean Connery was 007 and at the same time you want to dance in between sips of your dry martini.
As the band gets ready to release their third official LP, Spaced Out, they have just started playing with a new, full lineup and have sort of rechristened the band âLushy 9â. While previously playing with a revolving cast of musicians and using a laptop to supply the remaining instrumentation, the band has just begun playing with an expanded lineup to that now has a steady rhythm section, synths, keys and a horn section. The principle members of Lushy are singer Annabella Kirby (who sings in an indie pop band called The Moonspinners), multi-instrumentalist Andy Sodt and guitarist Matt Nims, who I met for an interview over drinks at a cozy downtown bar. Some of the musicians that have played with Lushy over its history include the KEXP DJ Johnny Horn and Lynval Golding, now a Puget Sound resident who was a member of the hugely influential (and now reunited) English ska band The Specials.
Ten people in all complete the live Lushy band, but the name Lushy 9 will remain. Kirby joked that âwe counted wrong and now there are ten people in the band.â While the principles agreed that Lushy 9 would be their name and liked the ring to it, Kirby added âitâll never be the Lushy 10, even if we have ten or sixteen people in the band.â
This Sunday nightâs show at Neumos, opening for Dengue Fever, will be just their fourth with their expanded arrangement and sans laptop, but for a lot of people, itâll be their first opportunity to see Lushy 9, so the band is treating it like the debut. The band now includes Kirby, Sodt and Nims and Brad Chodos-Irvine (percussion). The musicians currently playing in the live lineup of Lushy are Mark Bentz (bass), Debbie Sweetland (keyboards), Don Kenoyer (synth), Patrick Napper (trumpet), Zach Davies (trombone) and Fletcher Andrews (drums). âItâs more band for your buck,â Sodt in our interview. Really, any party is better when more people show up.
While the band has expanded their lineup, their sound has also evolved from their tiki party origins. One of the first Lushy shows was at an event called Tiki Oasis, held in Palm Springs, which fit the groupâs early dynamic well. Sodt explained, âWe were doing a lot of exotica stuff at the time and were into Martin Denny, so we were trying to do stuff like that. Weâve strayed away from pure tiki now and we have more influences, but back then we were pure exotica or tiki.â It was that show that led to their distribution deal with the independent label Dionysus Records.
The band attracts a diverse crowd to their shows, often bringing an older audience that you wouldnât normally see at a club like the Sunset or Chop Suey. They also said they play an average of a private party a month, often weddings. âWeâre not a typical party band that people hire, but people really like it,â Kirby said and Nims added âwe can party with the best of themâ.
âWe donât know how to capture the younger set, maybe we could do a Ween coverâ Sodt quipped during our interview with Nims joking âyeah, thatâll get us down to thirty-five year olds.â Talking with the band for over an hour, it was often difficult to tell when they were serious and when they were kidding, especially with some ideas for merchandise to sell at shows and online in the âLushy Lifestyle Storeâ. All jokes aside, Lushy does appear to be having a lot of fun with the music they make and with the crowds they play to. Talking with them, you get the sense that they will continue to play together until it stops being fun â and no one foresees that happening anytime in the near or distant future.
Spaced Out, forthcoming third album, is set to be released in February with a hard copy but fans should also be able to download the album digitally shortly after this article is posted, and likely before Sundayâs show with Dengue Fever. Sodt says itâs different because âwe decided we want to make a dance record and go back to the best of the seventies and use that as our influences.â The album, they said, is a reference to the famous bandleader Enoch Lightâs 1969 album, also called Spaced Out. Nims said they took their time recording it, but recorded it before adding any new musicians to the band so the core members of Lushy played all of the instrumentation on this album. They would, though, like to record an album soon with the new members of the band.
My favorite song from the new album is âGet Itâ, a cool as ice retro pop song that seems to have a hook in nearly every line Kirby sings yet and each verse is catchy itself, without having a defined chorus. When it gets to the bridge, the song goes in a completely different direction, led by both Kirbyâs harmonies and the melody.
For as many articles youâll read about how contemporary bands are rediscovering music from their parentsâ generations, there really isnât another band in Seattle like Lushy. They are completely forthright about their influences (an entire afternoon on Google wouldnât have led me to Enoch Lightâs name – and I knew who he was before the interview), but more importantly they seem to have as much fun themselves as the crowds do that hire them or that they play to. While they may blend elements of forties, fifties, sixties and seventies music throughout their songs, pop music always endures throughout each and every era because people (as a mass) enjoy catchy songs and they like to sing-along and they like to dance. Easily enough, anyone who likes that, should love Lushy.
{Photo by Ivan Lasso.}
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Topics mentioned:
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Sunday, Jan 10 Lushy 9 opening for Dengue Fever at Neumos
Neumos Presents: Dengue Fever, Lushy, Darek Mazzone (KEXP Expansions) :: Doors at 8pm :: $15 adv :: Advance tickets on sale now at: www.ticketswest.com, select QFCs, Rudy’s Barbershops, Moe Bar [Buy Tickets Online] :: 21+
Sunday, Jan 10 2010
8pm Doors
Nuemos 925 E Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122
See you at the show!!!
You won’t want to miss this one!
Lushy goes on at 9:30
http://myspace.com/lushymusic
http://www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic
http://kexp.org/programming/djpage.aspx?djid=285
http://neumos.com/
Saturday, Dec 26 Lushy 9 at Conor Byrne
The Lushy 9 will be at Conor Byrne in beautiful Ballard on Boxing Day, Saturday Dec 26 with opening band Laguna.
Saturday, Dec 26
9:30pm
Conor Byrne
5140 Ballard Avenue Northwest
Seattle, WA 98107-4818
(206) 784-3640
directionsp>
Lushy's Snowflake Surprise=great stocking stuffer!
Available now at CD Baby
Snowflake Surprise
Dance the Night
Cheese Balls
Heat Miser
Panettone
Christmas Time Is Here
Hot Buttered Rum
Bottles, Bugles, Bright Shiny Bells
Christmas Waltz
Holiday party at the Georgetown Ballroom
Next Show Saturday Dec 5th Girl Trouble+Lushy 9+Dignitaries
Start the holiday season off with us at our next show in beautiful downtown Tacoma, Washington at The New Frontier Lounge. We’ll be performing with the world famous GIRL TROUBLE!!! And local garage rockers THE DIGNITARIES! This will be the inaugural show of the LUSHY 9, that’s LUSHY with a live rhythm section, keys, synth, and horns…don’t miss it!!! We will be performing some songs from our holiday cd Snowflake Surprise and Girl Trouble will be dishing out holiday classics too!
Lushy 9 = Mark Bentz-upright bass/electric Bass; Debbie Sweetland-keyboards; Don Kenoyer-synthesizer; Patrick Napper-trumpet; Zack Davies-trombone; Fletcher Andrews-drum kit and yours truly Andy Sodt-sax, melodica, flute; Annabella Kirby-vocals; Matt Nims-guitar, Brad Chodos-Irvine-percussion.
9pm
New Frontier Lounge
301 E 25th St
Tacoma, WA 98421
(253) 572-4020
Directions
Fetherston Gallery Nov 12
Lushy perfoming at the opening of Elizabeth Jameson’s new work at Fetherston Gallery November 12th 6-9pm
Lushy plays Reverb Fest Oct 3, 2009
Lushy will be back in action at the Seattle Weekly’s annual  REVERB Local Music Festival, Saturday, October 3rd in Ballard, featuring 64 local bands at 10 venues.Â
Lushy’s set 9pm at Volterra Drawing Room  5407 Ballard Ave NW Seattle, WA 98107 (206) 789-5100

Lushy in Seattle Magazine

Old School, New Music: Lushy
![]() (Photo by Hayley Young) Sounds Like: The Jetsons with swizzle
Lushy She called some friends in Palm Springs who were throwing a Tiki event and booked their first show. âWe got a distribution deal that same week,â she says. âWeâve been playing out ever since.â Marrying spacey, âcocktail-yâ sounds from the â60s and â70s with their own offbeat attitude, the band sounds like a vinyl record you might find propped on Austin Powersâ mini bar. Even though theyâve been at it for a decade now, thereâs a newness in their music that makes you feel like grabbing a drink and seeing where the night goes. Ten years is a long time for any band to stick together, particularly a throwback pop band in a city that prides itself on testing rockâs limits. But with four albums of original material under their belt and two more in the works for release this year, Lushyâs greatest asset may be that theyâve never been so much of the Seattle music sceneâperhaps a byproduct of those years in Sodtâs basement, where it was easy to lose track of the music other local bands were making. âIt always seems like weâre the exact opposite of every other band [in town],â Sodt says. Nims adds that their music has ânever had anything to do with whatâs been happening here. Thatâs not really by choice; itâs justâŚwhat feels progressive to us.â #lounge #pop #dance #cinematic #tiki #exotica #1960's #bossa |