One of my greatest joys in life is falling in love with a band I didn’t even know existed until I hear them at a live show and they hit all my buttons right off. It’s happened a time or two before, most often with local shows when I’m there to see an opener and stick around, or get to shows early and catch opening bands for the bands I’m there to see. In this case, I went spur of the moment to catch a casual friend’s band (Twilight Sleep, who are also worth hearing) and since I was already out, decided to stay for the headliner that night – a band called Seaspin doing a month-long residency at a small venue. I hadn’t listened to them before going to the show, had barely read their bio on the venue’s website. It was truly serendipitous, because I ended up falling and falling hard for Seaspin.

The band is the brainchild of Ronnie Washburn and Jennifer Goodridge, who worked together in the band Your Enemies’ Friends and shared stages with the like of Blonde Redhead, TV on the Radio, Mars Volta, and others. Together they’ve forged a potent mixture of shoegaze and dream pop, with intricate drum tracks punctuating Washburn and Goodridge’s noise riffs and Goodridge’s lush vocals overlaying everything. It took somewhere around thirty seconds for me to break out into a wide grin that didn’t leave my face all night, and I was back the next week to see them finish out their residency, this time having listened to their EP almost non-stop all week.

I almost always enjoy going out to hear local bands do their thing, but it’s not every time that one catches me as strongly as Seaspin has. They’ll definitely be a band that I seek out every time they play, probably to the extent that Jennifer and Ronnie (who are both extremely personable) will tire of me hanging around. And if you like stuff like Viva Voce, Sonic Youth, and The Raveonettes, you should definitely be keeping Seaspin on your radar. Filling out the band are Ross O’Carroll on bass, Isaac Carpenter on drums, and at least for this show, Liana Piper on keys.

Here’s an MP3 of the title track from their EP Reverser, which is available for $4.95 from both Amazon.com MP3 and iTunes. They’ve also got the entire thing streaming on their Facebook and MySpace pages. Plus, you can keep up with them on their Twitter and website.

Seaspin – Reverser

I apologize for the low quality of my photos; this is one of the darkest venues in town, and I only had my iPhone with me. There are some great shots on their Facebook, or check out these ones from Stereogum.