This weekend, during Capitol Hill Block Party, more than 100 local and international music acts will fill the Pike/Pine corridor for the 21st edition of one of Seattle's biggest music festivals. On our Capitol Hill Block Party calendar, you can see the complete schedule that's sortable by venue and date, find a printable version of the schedule, and read descriptions about and listen to music from every artist. If that's overwhelming, look no further—below, you'll find just our critics' picks for Friday, sorted by genre. Plus, to make it even easier for you, we've even made you a Spotify playlist for all of these artists —find it at the end of the list. For more, check out our critics' picks for Saturday and Sunday.
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Jump to: Hiphop/Rap | Pop | Rock | Electronic | Jazz/Funk | Soul/R&B | Punk
HIPHOP/RAP
Gifted Gab
Gifted Gab’s gift of gab is solid. With roots in Seattle’s hiphop crew Moor Gang, Gab is blessed with a strong lyrical bite as she raps about her love of blunts and the annihilation of her punk-ass enemies with unrepentant swagger. Gab calls her hypnotic style “girl rap”—and she swiftly and supremely struts her stuff along the likes of Lauryn Hill, Lil' Kim, and Missy Elliott. AMBER CORTES
(Neumos, 8:15 pm)
Noname
If you ever fooled yourself that contemporary hiphop couldn’t be tender, soulful, and non-corny, pick up Telefone, one of 2016’s best rap albums, the debut release of Chicagoan Fatima “Noname” Warner. She sits squarely in the constellation of heartfelt, populist Midwest hiphop artists who orbit (and are technically more interesting than) Chance the Rapper. Noname’s sharp-but-susurrant murmur recalls Chano, Jean Grae, and even Lauryn Hill’s smoother moments on the mic—flowing, sometimes spilling over the banks of the beat, warm and comforting as Day One in times of crisis. First heard on Mick Jenkins’s Trees & Truths tape, then on Acid Rap’s “Lost,” Noname has had an organic ascent into a headliner. She’s a blissfully hype-light success story. Extra credit: Jamila Woods’s Noname-featuring “VRY BLK” (from Woods’s also essential HEAVN) bubbles over with a delicate, childlike joy in being melanin-rich. Purest Black Girl Magic. LARRY MIZELL JR.
(Main Stage, 5:15 pm)
Run The Jewels
Killer Mike and El-P are each fine rap artists in their own right. Together, they’re an alt-hiphop match made in heaven. El-P is aggressive and serpentine in his rhymes, a lover of the sci-fi metaphor, and brings austere production values to their mixes (along with select guests), while Killer Mike leans more to political and social commentary, and has a deliberate-quick delivery style (and he knows how to snake some verses, too). In sum, the super-duper duo complement each other well and have kept the greatness going with this year’s Run the Jewels III. LEILANI POLK
(Main Stage, 10:45 pm)
POP
Austra
During a summer afternoon at 2011's Capitol Hill Block Party, I staggered into the sauna known as Neumos and encountered Austra, a female-dominated Canadian group who were singing the heaven out of emotionally fraught, goth-inflected electronic tunes—while busting graceful, fluid moves. What a pleasant surprise amid the indie-rock hegemony of that day. In a review of that performance, I wrote that Austra came off "like three Kate Bushes if they were recording for 4AD circa 1984." With their music, Austra come close to exuding the grandeur of Zola Jesus. This isn't really dance music as much as it is a showcase for Austra's chilly, gorgeous compositional skills and vocal dramaturgy. They're a class act. DAVE SEGAL
(Vera Stage, 10:45 pm)
Katie Kate
I first saw Katie Kate at CHBP in 2014 and was impressed with her chameleon-like command of various genres (and instruments), enchanted by her quirky, vibrant performance style, and addicted to those fresh, killer hooks. Now, after a (too) long hiatus, Katie Kate is back with a new album and an edgier, emotionally raw, but skillfully produced pop feel. AMBER CORTES
(Neumos, 9:30 pm)
ROCK
Cherry Glazerr
It’s easy to regard Cherry Glazerr with skepticism. They’ve got a candy-sweet name, the frontwoman is an actress (Margaux on Transparent), and they achieved liftoff faster than most, but that’s what happens when a fashion designer (Yves Saint Laurent’s Hedi Slimane) digs a band and uses their music in a campaign. Fortunately, Clementine Creevy’s combo deserves the exposure. In the context of the Los Angeles music scene, they slot between Missing Persons and Dum Dum Girls by weaving garage pop and new wave with a touch of the darker stuff. On their third record, Apocalipstick, Creevy recalls Sinéad O’Connor as she wraps her swooping soprano around songs about gleeful slobs and social-media addicts. If Rookie magazine were a band, it would sound like this. KATHY FENNESSY
(Vera Stage, 8:15 pm)
The Gods Themselves
Seattle trio the Gods Themselves are reaching the apex of an upward trajectory that began in 2014 with their self-titled debut. Their knack for huge, honkin’ hooks that exude toughness and hedonism has never wavered over their three increasingly polished albums. Pink Noise and Be My Animal find the Gods Themselves—vocalist/guitarist Astra Elane, baritone guitarist/vocalist Dustin Patterson, and drummer Collin O’Meara—striving for commercial success without compromising integrity. They know how to make glam rock, disco, and new wave achieve ornate peaks of melody and groove. DAVE SEGAL
(Barboza, 6:30 pm)
Haunted Horses
These increasingly grim times call for rock groups that both mirror America's darkness and offer catharsis from it. Behold Seattle's Haunted Horses (drummer Myke Pelly and guitarist Colin Dawson), whose cantankerous post-punk salvos puncture your malaise even as they magnify your angst. Haunted Horses are probably the closest thing this city has to Liars: clangorous, angular, black/gray rock heavy on the tom-tom thumping. Ride on for the darkness. DAVE SEGAL
(Cha Cha, 6:45 pm)
Kyle Craft
How is it even possible to be as unbelievably catchy and ebullient as Kyle Craft? And how is it that the instant some people open their mouths or play a few notes on a slapped back piano you’re suddenly sucked up into a sweet, sad tornado of Badfinger, Emitt Rhodes, Harry Nilsson, Shoes, Velvet Crush, et al? And what happened to the days when you could see a different proper power pop band every night of the week in Seattle? Don’t answer. I know what happened to those days. SEAN NELSON
(Vera Stage, 6 pm)
My Goodness
My Goodness are the Seattle torque-and-stomp blues-fired duo of Joel Schneider and Ethan Jacobsen. Schneider's Verellen-amped guitar sound caves into Jacobsen's drums like a landslide. Jacobsen's totemic, ore-cracked cymbals, snare, and kick receive and reciprocate the landslide, hammering back the vibrations with sturdy balance and malt-liquored lilting. Schneider's muscle-toned vocals (See also: Absolute Monarchs) are a furnace of screams, but can switch to a bullet-in-the-heart croon in seconds. TRENT MOORMAN
(Neumos, 11:15 pm)
Lucy Dacus
There’s a line in Lucy Dacus’s song “Direct Address” that I probably haven’t gone more than a week without singing, saying, thinking, feeling since I heard her ludicrously good debut album, No Burden, early last year: "I let my mind get turned inside out/ Just to see what the kids were laughing about/ And it wasn't worth understanding/ Something I could've gone my whole life not knowing." Wisdom, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this by way of both celebrating and apologizing for how nice it feels to hear smart, shrewd songs like hers—which would fit perfectly on every mixtape I made in 1995—in 2017. SEAN NELSON
(Main Stage, 4 pm)
Sloucher
I just know that the moment I heard Sloucher's Certainty EP, it sounded deeply familiar. Not because it's derivative, but because the sounds it's made from are the default mode of my musical consciousness, pleasure center, and soul. Whatever that may or may not be worth in the swingin' marketplace of ideas, it means a lot to me. Dusky voiced songwriter Jay Clancy has my melodic number. The lyrics are smart and rhythmic, the playing is nimble and inventive, the scale is humble, even the distortion is pleasing. SEAN NELSON
(Vera Stage, 5 pm)
Wolf Parade
High school was a weird time for everybody, right? Thankfully, I had a cool best friend who later went to art school (she really had her shit down early), and she was the one to play Apologies to the Queen Mary for me back in 2005. It felt rare to listen to and enjoy “indie rock” without wanting to fling myself off the nearest structure—finger noise on steel frets that didn’t sound like a forcibly acoustic winky-face, white-dude voices that weren’t nauseatingly cloying in their earnestness to sound disaffected, thumping percussion that felt foundational and leading without minimizing the power of a simple kick-drum-laden banger. Following that album, Wolf Parade expanded to At Mount Zoomer, and to my favorite, Expo 86, with an eventual hiatus declared in 2011. After five years split among three additional bands (Divine Fits, Handsome Furs, Operators), frontman Dan Boeckner is finally back. Let’s hope Wolf Parade can relocate how to pound skin and lash synth from their ’00s glory and make me proud. KIM SELLING
(Main Stage, 9:15 pm)
ELECTRONIC
Mura Masa
Growing up on the remote island of Guernsey in the English Channel, Alex Crossan (aka Mura Masa) experimented with punk, metal, and even gospel before firmly planting his feet in electronic music. Fusing future bass and R&B, trap, calypso, and hiphop, his viral hit "Love$ick" broke Spotify back in early 2016. Mura Masa’s debut album came out in July; expect big things. AMBER CORTES
(Main Stage, 7:45 pm)
JAZZ/FUNK
Thundercat
Thundercat ranks among the 21st century’s most impressive six-string bass slingers; he lays down wet electro grooves just as easily as impeccable, fret-hopping solos, his sound a fusion of soul, post-jazz, and what can be best described as future funk. He also sings in a delicate falsetto caress. His third and latest studio record, Drunk, is a contender for 2017’s best—it’s a clever, idiosyncratic, and playful work of art. LEILANI POLK
(Main Stage, 6:30 pm)
SOUL/R&B
Scarlet Parke
Ushering in the evening is Seattle’s own blues-pop singer-songwriter, Scarlet Parke, who has a velvety-rich vocal timbre and a powerful set of pipes that can creep low and sultry, scale to belting heights, or sass and snap as she sings it like it is. Her four-piece backing band includes saxophonist Frank Vitolo, and his brass accompaniment drives her points home without feeling overwrought or excessively smooth. LEILANI POLK
(Barboza, 7:30 pm)
PUNK
Constant Lovers
It used to be that people employed the term "wall of sound" to describe the studio production work of now-convicted murderer/hairpiece cautionary tale Phil Spector. But bands of today provide an all-consuming product well beyond anything Spector did with the Ronettes or anyone else. Seattle four-piece Constant Lovers are one of those bands: Everything about their sound is mammoth, imposing, and—incidentally—a total blast. GRANT BRISSEY
(Cha Cha, 9:45 pm)
Mommy Long Legs
Mommy Long Legs play fun, fast punk about inappropriate topics. They celebrate the fart, the belch, and being weird, all while railing against condo-dwelling bros, catcallers, and other assorted assholes with a flair for both mischievous hilarity and good ol’ punk-rock pissed-off-edness. It’s all very cathartic, to say the least. AMBER CORTES
(Cha Cha, 7:45 pm)
Pink Parts
Newish band Pink Parts churn out direct and powerful feminist-punk/hardcore jams. Their demo is forcefully dynamic, and a video of a recent show points to 1990s riot-grrrl/queercore bands like Team Dresch or Tribe 8. BRITTNIE FULLER
(Cha Cha, 8:45 pm)
