The Broken Knives

Saturday, December 27

Based on the information they’ve provided, the members of Seattle quartet the Broken Knives range in height from 5’4” to 5’8”, with frontwoman Morgan Chosnyk at the tall end of the spectrum. Their stunningly good song “Frame X Frame,” however, is 100 feet tall, angry, jacked on probably every stimulant known to man, and out for blood. Based on her vitriolic, distorted (yet melodic) crooning and yowling on that tune, Chosnyk’s been compared to everyone from Andrea Zollo to Karen O; the rest of the band, meanwhile, garrotes that melody with barbed-wire guitars, feedback, and clattering goth-industrial rhythms. But they’re hardly all about noise – “Epilogue” is an absolutely engrossing, haunting, ethereal slice of shoegazery atmospherics reminiscent of late-period Slowdive. Both sides of Broken Knives’ musical personality will hopefully be represented both on the EP they’re working on and in their live set; based on what I’ve heard already, they may be towering over the Seattle music scene in no time.

Sat., Dec. 27, 9:30 p.m., 2008