The second contender in the Korean-made ramen throwdown. This one offers a super-vivid red packaging, “Hot Beef Flavor”, and fanciful french translations of all the korean-language instructions (“Nouille Chaude De Saveur De Boeuf” which like to think means “New Claude, the Savior of Beef”). No weird creatures or anything, just a happy little chef fellow giving us the thumbs up.

In general my experience with Korean ramen suggests that they trend toward spicey broth and solid, hearty portions. This entry was no exception, and yet amid that field this ramen seems just a bit overshadowed by it’s neighbors. As prepared, the noodle brick provided good thick, chewey noodles and the broth was hot and (shocker) salty, pleasantly spicy. The freeze dried veggies add a bit of variety but in general disappear into the mix a little bit. Overall, compared to the Champ-pong seafood ramen, this just lacked the same degree of heady character.

I borrowed some dried seaweed from coworker Kate and put it in the soup which did give the flavor a little more depth than just spicy-salty, and provided a little more variety of color to the eye as well. And despite it’s lack of conviction, this was still a very high quality ramen, a solid meal and a flavorful, spicy, and convenient asian noodle soup lunch experience that only falls slightly short of the depth of character attained by it’s peers.

Quality: Good, if not great, slightly lacking in character
Notable Features: vivid red package, french translations, jaunty chef cartoon fellow

I was excited about this particular ramen as it was one of the pricier options from our local Uwajimaya ramen shelf, and something about the happy squid-with-chopsticks mascot appealed to my perverse side (despite my usual avoidance of food-as-mascot). In addition, the photo of the soup itself features what appears to be an *entire squid or octopus*. Despite experience that suggests the package photo being a fairly … optimistic representation of the soup contained therein, I opened the package with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. What if the cephalopod in question was, ya know, in there?

Fortunately the package contained no horrifying sea creatures, or even cartoonish representations of same entreating me to eat them, only a healthy-looking noodle disk (fits in a bowl better than the typical noodle-brick) and two packets. In addition to a deep red soup base, there was a packet of freeze dried veggies, seafood chunks (indeterminate species), and seaweed. When prepared, the broth was bright red and pleasently oily. The noodles were sizable with a great texture, and the soup itself was very spicy and seafood-y, with a good aroma. The heat was enough to make my nose run!

Overall, this is one of my best run-ins with ramen to date. Not only was this one of the headiest and most flavorful ramen soups I’ve had, but it possessed a depth of character far beyond the expectations of a microwaved meal under $2. Icing on the cake, it was hearty enough to provide a legitimate solid meal out of the experience. I will definitely be trying this ramen out again.

Quality: Great
Notable features: Spicy, fishy, horrifying sea creatures and cartoonish representations of same on package.

While we are practicing up and honing our skills to better BLOW YOUR MINDS, y’all can waltz on over to facebook and RSVP to the event we have going on there!  Bring your friends, and mark your calendars!

We will of course have many copies of The Unrepentant Symphony of Days at the show!

We are also playing a show on Wednesday, May 11th at the Comet Tavern! We will sell you our CD there! The relevant deets are on our Facebook Page

More info at the Sunset’s website

Hello everybody!

Come to our show at the Blue Moon on Friday 12/10! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153735028002703

I’m excited and proud to announce that The Popular Monsters are playing a show on a FRIDAY NIGHT, December 10th, at the Blue Moon Tavern (in The University District). We will be joined by energetic rock superfriends The Hoot Hoots and The Steve Neilson Band. So clear your calendars!

For all of you who have dragged yourselves out to shows on a Monday or Sunday, this is a chance to catch us live and still sleep in the next day as God intended. For those who haven’t been able to make those difficult-to-attend dates and times, here’s a chance to come out and see us play live! And what is especially exciting is that IF YOU ALL COME OUT AND HELP US BLOW THE DOORS OFF THE BLUE MOON WE MAY NEVER HAVE TO PLAY A MONDAY AGAIN! That’s right, if we go out and do this thing right we can build up the kind of rep that keeps us playing weekend dates for months and years to come. We will remember you when we are famous, promise.

In addition, we will bring our ever-expanding flavor of knock-your-socks-off-fun so we can show you all the good time you so richly deserve. Here are the ever-lovin’ deets!

The Popular Monsters, The Hoot Hoots, The Steve Neilson Band
FRIDAY December 10th, 9pm
The Blue Moon
712 NE 45th ST

As always, you can also support the band by continuing to listen to our music, and consider ‘liking’ us on facebook. Or forward this message to a friend, or just tell them about the band!

After long days in the studio at Simpler Times and an extensive mixing and mastering and overdubbing phase, The Popupular Monsters are proud to announce their upcoming release will be titled The Unrepentant Symphony of Days! While the release date has yet to be finalized and we are currently progressing through a slight lull as some local heavies weigh in on the production, we are fairly sure that there will be 11 tracks, and the list will look something like this:

The Unrepentant Symphony of Days

1. Overstayed
2. Rock, Paper, Schism!
3. Captain America
4. A Subtle Dragon
5. Queen of Bad Decisions
6. Sue Bird
7. Shattertown
8. Smile for a Friend
9. Enkidu’s Private Skyline
10. Making Time with New Media
11. Fifth of Courage

We can’t wait until this all wraps up and we can share all the songs with you!

Listeners of our local sports radio sensation 950 KJR reportedly got a sneak listen to one of the tracks off of upcoming new Popular Monsters album. “Sue Bird” is a song written as a tribute to Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird after their first championship title, and recording this summer by the band as the Storm were making their groundbreaking sprint for the Western conference title. Go Storm!

The Popular Monsters are in the studio! Which is the same as our practice space, but with more cables. And more opportunity to feel weird about how you sound on tape. Recording is a dark art, and like all dark arts is best approached in an amateurish fashion and with little regard to convetional wisdom; because, really, it’s when you accidentally scuff that pentagram with the heel of your shoe and let the demons out that things get really fun and interesting

Being in a band is a gear-intensive past time, and recording is no exception. When I was getting into this I had all sorts of notions about what was entailed by a “rock and roll lifestyle”, but now that I’ve done this for a while I have come to understand that really all of it is just carrying heavy equipment in and out of structures, for ever. Sometimes you get to plug in an instrument and doink around for a while, but to get there it’s like eight solid days of carting around slant-back cabs.

Our practice space / recording studio is in an unlikely part of town, one not normally associated with the excess and depravity of rock and roll. It is also at the bottom of a cliff; there are, I believe, 92 nearly-vertical steps that are the only way in and out of that place. And every piece gear has to come down those steps. Every time we play a show, every piece of gear has to come back up them! And we, your indie-rock Sisyphus, doggedly roll that stone up the cliff face time and time again. Because we love you. And attention.

With luck, there will be some chatter about the fruits of our recording labors here sometime soon. If I haven’t jinxed it!

It’s just plain tacky to leave the site at a single post for any length of time, so I thought I would weigh in on some of the thoughts that run through my mind about being in a band from time to time. Today’s thought had to do with Morrissey and the Smiths, and how he was really into being a vegetarian to the point of forcing all the rest of the members of the band to declare that they didn’t eat meat, even though they did. And how that’s like this total jerky megolamaniacal thing that, if anyone we knew personally tried to pull that kind of crap, we would instantly call them out on it. But instead it’s like this feature that seems to just build the cult of personality around Morrissey and reinforce the legend of The Smiths and all.

Anyway, in the larger context, well first of all I think Meat is Murder is a great album except for it’s miserable title track, and second I was thinking maybe I should adopt some totally absurd thing, like a hatred of primary colors or something, that I would then push on the other members of the ‘Monsters, as a way of further building the Popular Monsters brand. Because, really, if you can’t get away with totally bizarre and anti-social affectations like that, what’s the point of being in a band? It’s like, the creative process is strange and seldom understood, so with the truly awe-worthy artists the most dedicated fans are unwilling to question any behavior, no matter how strange. And how that sway inevitably leads to some strange freakin’ behavior. (I’m looking at you, Bowie, among others).

Anyway, that said, we’ll be hard at work cranking out the awesome so that maybe, someday, we can be accepted for all the crazy shit we’ll pull when we are famous.

There’s projects afoot, also. More on that later.