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Triple Mood, Fat Starfish, Glass Souls sate the day with blues and soul

September 18th, 2019: High Dive

Dan Ray September 26, 20191 Comment
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Triple Mood, Fat Starfish, Glass Souls sate the day with blues and soul September 26, 20191 Comment

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Triple Mood (with Fat Starfish saxophonist Seven Sky Spillios) headlines High Dive in Fremont. // Photo by Dan Ray

Wednesday night at High Dive, Glass Souls frontwoman Lana Sparks — a 20-something wearing a black dress and combat boots, with some of the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen — stood on stage, flanked on either side by guitarist Gary Bruce and bassist Shawn Ross. Behind her, on drums, sat Stephen Adams.

On Sparks’s right, Bruce, who most likely sits somewhere on the younger end of Gen X, donned a black, wicker cowboy hat atop a mustache that screams for a Western starring Tom Selleck. Ross, on Sparks’s left, cooly embodied your dad’s quiet-but-secretly-incredibly-interesting friend that is your saving grace at family events, wearing a t-shirt under an open button-up, a baseball cap, and playing a fretless bass. Adams, wearing a graphic tee with some kind of animal skull on it and a black bandana tied around his forehead, came in as the resident goth of the group.

A motley crew at first glance, the dark blues-rock group used their gigantic sound to quite literally push any outward discrepancies between the band members off the stage.

Bruce’s rhythm guitar work throughout the set was incredibly intricate, and Ross and Adams made for an impeccable rhythm section, fully locking in together. Watching Sparks, though, in her all-black outfit, was like happily being pulled into a black hole, waiting for promises of love and comfort just on the other side.

Made to be a soul-rock singer, Sparks’s voice was so thick that it often sounded like she was both the lead and the background vocals — but there weren’t any background vocals. With an expressive face and a mouth that opened wide with every note, I often felt like I was going to tumble down Sparks’s throat, down deep into the black hole of rock ‘n’ roll, not caring if I returned.

While some of the vocals felt pushed instead of released, with intoxicating songs that averaged upwards of five minutes — including a fun cover of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” — Sparks funneled the passion and grit of the entire band through herself and into the audience, making for a set that felt like slowly sipping on a Dark and Stormy made from top-shelf rum and Rachel’s Ginger Beer.

Fat Starfish, a new, local soul sextet playing their fourth show together, took the middle set. Since the band is new, they performed mostly covers, like Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” and Bill Withers’s “Use Me,” but threw in one funky original that showed what the band is capable of.

Frontwoman Penny Fischer has an incredible voice (she also said she stayed home from work that day because she had lost her voice; if she can sing like Etta James without a voice, I’m almost scared to see what she could do with one); saxophonist Seven Sky Spillios* bounced around stage having a great time; and guitarist Brian Ward threw out some funky riffs, but, ultimately, most likely since this is only their fourth performance, the chemistry just wasn’t quite there, and the musicians — clearly all talented — seemed to have a hard time locking in with each other.

However, Fat Starfish did put on an incredibly fun set, filled with high energy and thriving zeal. This band has some work to do, but, with a clear picture of who they want to be and the gusto to get out there and play, it’ll be fun to watch where this soulful bunch takes this project.

Triple Mood (frontwoman Kaeli Earle gleefully informed the audience that they chose the name because all three members are moody bitches), a trio from Bellingham now based in Seattle, headlined the evening. Composed of Earle on vocals and bass, Mōtus drummer Alex Roemmele, and pianist/saxophonist/melodica player Conner Helms, these three bitches knew how to hold down a stage. 

Playing mostly tracks from their September 2019 EP, Stay Gold, the group had a laid-back, unafraid to err, yet completely confident and capable vibe. Earle’s aura was joyously infectious, and her voice is easy and smooth, gliding over the audience’s heads and into whatever part of your brain makes you smile just because you fucking feel like it.

Roemmele kept the drums tight, and I was especially fond of the rickety sound he got out of a largely perforated cymbal with a hoof rattle on top. Helms, on stage right, seamlessly switched between his three instruments, keeping in time with Roemmele, Earle, and Spillios, who came out on sax for two tracks, one of which was Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing.)”

After a few more of the band’s original songs, Triple Mood ended the night with a mostly-instrumental Chick Corea cover, which really brought the jazz into the band’s self-described “jazz/funk/pop/fusion” genre. Earle brought equal joy to her bass playing (and scatting) on this track as she did to her more vocal-heavy tunes, and, as the last note rang out, I felt my body relax into itself, fully sated, sopping up Earle’s relaxed-yet-exuberant positivity, Fat Starfish’s dedication to fun, and Glass Souls’s intoxicating passion.

*Seven Sky Spillios is a contributor to Dan’s Tunes

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).