Quick Hits

by INLANDER & r & & r & & lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & S & lt;/span & unday night on Making the Band 4, choreographer Laurie Ann Gibson told a bunch of boy-band hopefuls -- frequently white, uniformly uncoordinated -- that dance wasn't a color, it was a soul. GALACTIC, like any funk band worth its salt, has been living that credo since way before Gibson spat it, inspiring clumsy people to get all dancey and sweaty for 13 years. They're just now, though, starting to coalesce into something more.





Their debut on Anti- (the boutique label that boasts Tom Waits, Porter Wagoner, Blackalicious and Neko Case) finds them amalgamating elements from various musical forms -- jazz, blues, afro-pop, hip-hop, musica cubana -- in a way that plays to the rhythmic requirements of funk without getting tedious through repetition. Of course having the likes of Mr. Lif, Boots Riley and Juvenile rapping over your groove helps too. The guest stars won't be joining Saturday, but the celestial funk will be in full effect.


-- LUKE BAUMGARTEN





Galactic at the Big Easy on Saturday, July 7 at 7:30 pm. $20; $22 at the door. Visit www.ticketswest.com or call 325-SEAT.





& lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & A & lt;/span & bold assertion: HARRY AND THE POTTERS have a bigger built-in audience than any band since, like, Wings. Basically everyone who's read the Potter series has fallen bat-shit ga-ga for the characters and themes. Fans buy costumes and share Potter-themed recipes. They write (sometimes naughty) fan fiction. These fans, they'd like nothing more than to have something teen wizard-related to rock about.





Yeah, the Potters have it pretty sweet, touring all over America playing to mid-sized venues of fans, screaming as much for the conceit as the music. It's a recipe for complacency the band has avoided by indulging its own slavish fandom. They create power-pop saccharinely sentimental not simply of the books, but of the sentimentality itself. There's a built-in -- if not necessarily intentional -- irony the lads have milked for three albums and two EPs of surprisingly successful fan pop.


-- LUKE BAUMGARTEN





Harry and the Potters with the Triumphant Returns at Caterina Winery on Monday, July 9 at 7 pm. Price TBA. Call 328-5069.





& lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & T & lt;/span & he Icelandic band Sigur Ros was the best thing to happen to American rock music since Les Paul. When bands from California and New York, previously armed with a three-chords-and-the-truth model handed down by Dylan and the Ramones, heard those long, lush, languid compositions by the 'Ros, it was like a new, glacial world opened up.





It must have happened that way for FUTURE OF FORESTRY, who shed their former pop-oriented projects to morph into something more universal and profound. The epic grandeur of a track like "Sanctitatis" from their album Twilight is a breath of icy, fresh air from this San Diego band, and the title track, where it could have broken open into rock-bombast fireworks, keeps it soft and bright like the Northern Lights. Future of Forestry is a young band learning to inhabit a huge acoustic space, moving further up and further in.


-- JOEL HARTSE





Future of Forestry with Unison and Sean Saugen at the Service Station on Thursday, July 12 at 7pm. Free. Call 466-1696.