ALELA DIANE SINGS folk songs about big-bellied whales and rocky ground and tatted lace. Her new record is The Pirate’s Gospel, a handmade, 15-track thing brimming with kiddy choirs, banjo, bare harp-like acoustic guitar, and Alela’s big, echoing voice, which fills up a room and makes her, a guitar, and two mics sound like a […]
Adam Gnade
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The Billy Nayer Show
More than Just Colorful Monkeys Eating Shit
THE MOVIE IS what did it for me. The American Astronaut (2001) is a black-and-white western set in space, and it’s a musical or maybe a rock opera, or sci-fi with rock songs—the lines are kind of blurred. Billy Nayer Show singer Cory McAbee (who wrote, directed, and starred in the film) plays Samuel Curtis, […]
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Slay the Hypemonster
Talkdemonic Hits SXSW like a Cop-Killer Bullet
IT ECHOED from one end of Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival to the other: drooling, geeked-up, media hype; soulless, grinning, industry clowns with BlackBerries and fanny packs fulla coke and some weird, unholy need to be close to something bigger than themselves. Most people—”people” being white, male music writers—were all amped on Art Brut, […]
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It’s Who You Know
Spring, Festival, YYYs Boner, Etc.
Spring’s already turning Portland into the Shire, and goodheartedness blooms like… shit that blooms. So. Caughtcha Being Good Award for the week goes to Amanda from Point Juncture, WA for donating her piano to the Artistery down on SE Division. Ghost to Falco, 2% Majesty, and Alec K Redfearn play the venue on Friday. Make […]
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Sans Devendra
Vetiver Sprouts Up Strong Through the Cracks
AS RESPONSIBILITY and weeks of travel and deadlines loom over me, I am listening to Vetiver’s “Belles” on repeat. The song feels, among many things, like medicine. It is a light, gentle, soothing piece of music, the kind of finger-picked country blues Led Zeppelin did with half of “Going to California” and the great “That’s […]
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It’s Who You Know
No Rest for the Wicked
You know what happens when you assume, right? It makes an ass out of you and me and then kicks you in the balls, and—while you’re down—busts your teeth in with a Louisville Slugger and sizzles lit incense sticks into the white part of your eyeballs. I spent last week at Austin, TX’s annual South […]
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Record Review
This’s What the New Quasi Sounds Like
QUASI’S NEW ONE, When the Going Gets Dark, is a record that comes to the party packing heat, heaviness, and wicked riffs. After the big thunderstorm of “Alice the Goon,” track two “The Rhino” starts off as free jazz. Speed piano plunks. Drums freak out. Noise gets frantic and loopy before the song falls carefully […]
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Paddy Portland
Decemberists and Friends do Pogues
LED BY THE fantastically gifted Shane MacGowan, the Pogues (’82-’96, now reunited) mixed punk rock and Irish traditionals into vigorous, drunken (but hyper-literate) rock sublimity. Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee and Chris Funk, with their friends Ezra Holbrook, Jesse Emerson, Derek Brown, Casey Neill, and Hanz Araki are Portland musicians who make their own great noise. This […]
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It’s Who You Know
It’s Local Music News, Y’Know
Lotta shit this week, so let’s get rolling. First up, Please Step Out of the Vehicle signed to Lucky Madison, which will release the band’s debut CD soon as they can pile into the studio. Meantime, singer Travis Pants says they’re working on a split EP with Point Juncture, WA and have recently souped up […]
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Howl Goddamnit, Howl!
We Are Wolves Are Wolves
IT IS WITH A PREDATORY intensity that We Are Wolves move through their songs. Stalking and waiting. Panting in anticipation of blood-soaked snow and the death-limped corpse. Of all the “wolf” bands making news right now—from Wolf Eyes and Wolfmother to Wolf Colonel and Wolf Parade—WAW sounds the most lupine, the band voted most likely […]
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It’s Who You Know
New All-Ages Venue!
Usually in this column I try and hit as much local music news as possible, but this one’s a biggie so I’m givin’ it full fucking roam. Todd Fadel, the man behind the late-great Meow Meow, is taking up the reigns of a brand-new all-ages venue in North Portland. Opening May 12, the K St. […]
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Psychedelic Music Issue User’s Guide
Letter from the Music Editor
Pullout: Mercury Music Issue