Retuned Tango Alpha Tango tackles Space Craft stage

Published 1:30 am Sunday, February 5, 2017

Tango Alpha Tango and Bainbridge’s own Erica Cooper will share the Space Craft Stage at Rolling Bay Hall during a doubleheader concert event at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11.

According to the Willamette Week’s Brandon Widder, Portland, Oregon’s “Tango Alpha Tango isn’t the band it once was.

The tried-and-true riffage and raw psychedelia, once the cornerstones of singer-guitarist Nathan Trueb’s particular brand of blues, have recently given way to a more pop-friendly kind of rock, as evident on the band’s latest release “White Sugar.”

Songs like “I Gotta Girl” and the title track showcase familiar distortion and chugging electric guitar, though the rest are more polished and subdued. “People,” for instance, has a carnivalesque design that banks on a lofty chorus and drummer Joey Harmon’s fills, while “Lonely” takes a more soulful approach to heartbreak before turning to chiming guitars and an accepting mentality that echos Tom Petty’s comeback album “Wildflowers.”

Trueb’s bright guitar work is tighter than ever throughout, however, and lined with fluttering bits of jazz and improvisation.

Erica Cooper is an alternative pop singer/songwriter from Bainbridge Island celebrating the impending release of her debut album “Safety Escape.”

She studied jazz vocal performance and composition at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

After graduating, she started taking audio lessons from engineer and producer, Alek Edmonds. It was then she found her passion for writing and sound. For the last four years, she has been writing and recording her first album with Alek Edmonds.

Cooper is influenced by disco and artists like Radiohead, The Eurythmics, Grimes, Joni Mitchell, Enya, Florence and the Machine, Imogen Heap, Arcade Fire and Feist. Themes in her music include the roles we play in love relationships, vulnerability, being present and staying in the moment, loss, addiction, her struggle with Lyme Disease, the highest highs and the lowest lows, self empowerment, setting boundaries and hope.

Tickets, $12 in advance and $15 at the door, are on sale at www.spacecraftpresents.org.