Instrumental Indie, California Folk and Joey Cape | What's Up Kitsap Weekend Wrock

By BILL MICKELSON
North Kitsap Herald Arts and Entertainment Reporter


Today, 3:37 PM
· UPDATED



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Local
instrumental indie band Madrid's CD release, a double shot of Andrew
Heringer and old salty punks gone acoustic, playing Bremerton in this
week’s docket of rock.

FRIDAY Jan. 30

ALLIGATORS
w/ Madrid CD release show, the Troubadors and Le Papillion at 7 p.m. at
the Charleston, 333 Callow Ave. in Bremerton. All ages, bar w/ ID, $5
cover. Info: myspace.com/madrid, myspace.com/thecharlestonmusicvenue.

Are vocals and lyrics necessary in a rock band?

That’s one question raised by the Kitsap-local four-piece Madrid. The band is
set for the release of its first album — a self-titled, nine-song collection of dynamically enigmatic instrumental indie tunes, recorded in part at Robert Lang studios in Seattle — dropping at the Chuck this weekend.

The band has no vocals. They said they’d initially intended on finding a singer, but never really got around to it. When they started to see that they had something good going, even just instrumentally, they went with it, built on it and wrocked it— bringing up the whole notion of how necessary vocals and lyrics are in
rock music.

Madrid has melody in its roaming clean-tone guitars, punctuation in its talkative bass lines and attitude in its drumbeats. And, maybe, there’s a bit of a story
somewhere in the overtones behind enigmatic song titles like “Finland is the Answer,” I ask songwriter Shea McVaugh?

“When I’m writing, I try not to intellectualize it that much,” the sweater-and spectacle-clad guitarist of the very smart-sounding band says.

But I believe him.

Maybe there’s not a story. Maybe there doesn’t need to be. Maybe music
without lyrics is something like an abstract painting, from which each listener can draw his or her own conclusion.

Or maybe there is no conclusion to be drawn.

Find more on Madrid, the band and the album, at myspace.com/madrid.