My first concert experience was Radiohead at Maple Leaf Gardens during the OK Computer tour, but I tend not to tell people about that show unless we’re doing a contest to see who’s got the most embarrassing first-show experience. Mine isn’t so bad, it was just dull—the newspapers the next day talked about Thom Yorke’s “rock-star antics,” which amounted to him slapping away a mic when he forgot the opening lines to a song. I thought, “if this is the best rock-star antic he can come up with, I’ll just stay home, thanks.” There were a couple of shows after that but I when I think of my first true concert experience, I think of the first show I went to see by myself: Sleater-Kinney, the White Stripes and C.O.C.O. at the Opera House in late 2000. At the time I thought it was really cool because I got to meet Corin Tucker (and promptly turned into a sputtering mess of a person); nowadays it’s fun to tell people that you saw Jack and Meg doing their own merch and not dressed up in outlandish stage costumes.

Time has treated each band quite differently. Sleater-Kinney’s out for the count, probably for good, after wrapping up a storied career with a decent but last-ditch left turn in The Woods. The White Stripes released White Blood Cells shortly after that show and rocketed to fantastic heights afterwards. And what of that last band, the oddly named C.O.C.O.? The bass/drums duo shared a common geographical and cultural ancestry with Sleater-Kinney, but not the same career trajectory. Instead of their star rising, C.O.C.O.’s profile remained stubbornly static—Olivia Ness and Chris Sutton released two albums and then kinda disappeared back into the Olympia scene that created them. Their relatively low profile seems partially by design; neither Ness nor Sutton seemed to be interested in much more than getting whatever crowd was in front of them to shake their hips to their lo-fi bass grooves.

Five years after their last album, The C.O.C.O. Sound, the duo have resurfaced with a new album, Play Drums + Bass. If you’ve heard a C.O.C.O. track before, don’t expect much in the way of deviations—half a decade doesn’t bring any major changes to the basic stripped-down soul/groove formula, though it sounds like Ness has an even better snarl than when she started singing. And if you’ve never heard a C.O.C.O. track before, “You Think But You Don’t Know” is a pretty good place to start.