Catch them if you can

By now the word should be well spread around town about Portland’s music-box folk quintet Musee Mecanique.

The first time Musee Mecanique came to Caterina in February, all of five people were on hand to see the band shift from delicately playing the saw, lap-pat percussion and whistling to quietly erupting into a subtle seven-synth onslaught.

After that performance, Platform Booking’s Patrick Kendrick was posting MySpace bulletins that simply read: “Best live band I’ve ever seen, seriously,” in advance of Musee Mecanique’s second visit to Caterina in May, which was justly well-attended.

You can listen to that show on 7’s P.A. System podcast with Platform Booking at spokane7.com/music/podcast to get a taste of Musee Mecanique’s mastery of dynamic music sensibilities. Or you can just check it live tonight at Caterina Winery for a Platform and Wig Fits All Heads presents show which also features Seattle’s See Me River.

See Me River plays dark spirited folk-rock that, too, incorporates natural sounds, whistling and infections hand-claps along with autoharp, glockenspiel, cheese graters and an actual shotgun blast.

The five-piece band is fronted by Kerry Zettel, who runs Seattle indie label Aviation Records, which signed Wig Fits’ local Kaylee Cole at the beginning of 2008.

Both See Me River and Musee Mecanique have stunning full lengths out in 2008. See Me River’s “Time Machine” was likened to a softer, gentler Tom Waits by the Seattle Weekly. It’s the kind of album you put on repeat while you’re cleaning house and suddenly two hours burns by and you still want to hear it again.

On Tuesday Musee Mecanique releases its full-length debut. The album, “Hold This Ghost,” dances eerily around the senses, arriving here and there at cinematic build ups, gospel reprises, and forlorn lullabies. The Portland Mercury called Musee Mecanique “…beautiful, complex, thoughtful, memorable and full of everything-right-where-it- should-be decisions.”

The latest Wig Fits/Platform presents banger goes down tonight at 7 p.m. at Caterina Winery, 905 N. Washington St. Cover is $8. Catch Musee Mecanique again, this time with support from Joel Smith, at Whitworth University’s HUB, 300 W. Hawthorne Rd., at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Gavin’s OK

Early online reports counted pop-rock singer Gavin DeGraw among those on the plane crash that killed four and left Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM critically injured last week.

While DeGraw was the headliner at the free T-mobile show in the Five Points area where Barker and AM had just performed prior to the crash, Degraw was not on the plane.

DeGraw is fine, as fans will find when he headlines a show Tuesday at The Knitting Factory, 919 W. Sprague Ave. Tickets are $23.50, through TicketsWest, www.tickestwest.com, (509) 325-SEAT.