Hello and welcome back to our series, Three Songs To The Head, where we feature three songs that we love, three songs that are stuck in our domes, three songs we simply feel must be shared with you! This time we’re featuring work by Tangerine, Mary Lambert and Friends and Family Band. Work that will move you, work that swells, work that inspires. 

Tangerine is a new band out of Seattle and they are already making the rounds, playing out a bunch, and doing that thing that new bands need to do: create a buzz. Their new single “Feel This Way” displays sweet harmonies, floating guitar tones and 60’s-style pop rhythms. It’s a song that you could imagine turning to you in a movie house and saying, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” We expect to see more fine things from this band in the future. They’re putting in the work!

Mary Lambert is fast becoming a Seattle folk hero. First with her collaboration with rapper Macklemore and now with her single, “She Keeps Me Warm.” It is rumored she just sat with Monarch favorite Julia Massey for a Drinks With but sources can’t confirm just yet! Lambert is a sweetheart and her voice is powerful. Her message, though, is what matters and her message on “She Keeps Me Warm” is that of love and acceptance – maybe more than that: beautifully, she tells us to appreciate difference. “I can’t change,” she sings, “even if I tried, even if I wanted to.”

Friends and Family Band are one of those epic bands where you find yourself looking around, looking left, looking right, and saying, “Where the hell did these people come from?” We first caught up to them at their CD release at The Crocodile Cafe a few months ago, a big, fabulous event. They have huge harmonies, they have a huge band, they have huge heart. Their song “Green and Yellow Basket” rises and falls like one of those carnival things one strikes with a hammer to test one’s strength.

–Jake Uitti, Managing Editor, The Monarch Review