For as long as people have turned a shabby gaze toward the Emerald City, there has long been a charge to assign a sound to Seattle. The idea that boiled it down to grunge was largely luck and reverse psychology. A Sub Pop receptionist sticking it to a fashion mag and an affected generation sticking it hair metal major label execs. So it’s strange that Seattle grew up to inherent that mantle – a second Silicon Valley ensconced in dreary marketing campaign of rainy winters.
What really bubbles in Seattle has begun to re-emerge in the past decade. It’s been home to folk, hip-hop, noise and now KA. Much like Scandinavia’s music often mimics the extremes of the seasons, “///PEG” may not speak to Seattle existing in its perception-as-reality bubble its darkly belched lyrics concerning the grim which covers “your cultural truth” and how the world “hurts my ears” but I hear “///PEG” and I miss my old stomping grounds. The swirl of the wind between the high rises in the early winter darkness; the painful traffic jams of a city still in the disbelief of its corporate emergence; and that no matter how much time has passed between the days of Layne, Mark and Kurt, the city is but a pall of hardness. KA is sinister, thumping and the heavy bass and drums of the three piece is a ferocious reminder that no matter what people believe, Seattle is seething and ready to take back its grungy roots, even if they are grown in soil of doomgaze.