WHAT A BEAUTIFUL, smart, sad film—and what a beautiful, smart, sad film pissed upon by bad sound. Set almost entirely in the front seat of a car, Free Zone shows Jewish American Rebecca (Natalie Portman) and Hanna (Hana Laszlo), a middle-aged Israeli, road tripping across Israel’s desolate, scorched desert-scape. Hanna, serious and hardened by war […]
Adam Gnade
Posted inMusic
Stop Blushing
Rogue Wave Ain’t Slutty
ROGUE WAVE is from the same town as MC Hammer, and they release records on Sub Pop. Their new one, Descended Like Vultures, is part classic rock harmony fest, part shoegazer death ray. I talked to Zach Rogue last week and we talked about everything but music. Please give us a brief “State of the […]
Posted inMusic
The Scene Report
Local Music News
This has nothing to do with Steven Seagal, but post-grunge rockers the Thermals are playing at Doug Fir on Saturday with Nonstop Co-Op Band and Yes Father. I got in touch with singer Hutch Harris in last week’s column but it’s been a while since we’ve given them some decent space in the paper, so […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Double Happiness, My Ass
Mountain Patrol is Two Tons of Grim
Y’KNOW HOW THE TRUTH knocks the wind out of you sometimes? Happens especially with movies. You’re watching, say, Boys Don’t Cry, and in the end when everybody’s shot to pieces and laying in their own dried blood you’re like, “People really do this. People really do fucked-up, evil shit like this.” Chuan Lu’s new film, […]
Posted inMusic
Meet The…
Better to See You With
THERE ARE MANY here among us who believe violence doesn’t have a place in art. I’m not one of those and, as evidenced by their live show, Portland’s the Better to See You With aren’t either. On stage, it’s a battle of moaning, shrieked vocals, grinding synth, and drums and guitar that growl and gnash […]
Posted inMusic
It’s Who You Know
Everything New, Everything Just Born
New music. New songs. New EPs, LPs, 7-inches, tapes… it’s all bursting from the soil now that the ground’s nice and thawed. Take a look outside: Our gardens and planters and front yards are overflowing with good new noise. First off, Sam Humans of …worms writes to say he has a new 12-inch coming out […]
Posted inFeature
Making the Grade
The Mercury Food Issue Checks In with Old Standbys
Making the Grade
Posted inMusic
It’s Who You Know
Local Music News, Abridged
You know how long 400 words is? Fuckin’ tiny. This column is 400 words, and if you’re only reading it in the paper, you’re getting the truncated, summarized, runt-ass version. All week, I file local news at the Mercury‘s Blog Town, PDX, so what you see in Thursday’s print edition is a “best of” compendium. […]
Posted inMusic
Bike into the F-ing Sunset
PDX’s Show Me the Pink Rides East
PORTLAND BIKE PSYCHOS Show Me the Pink make vigorous, robust new-wave dance anthems that sound like the theme to Flash Gordon sung by a team of horny teenage motivational speakers. The core of the group is originally from Richmond, Virginia but their new record, Velocipedomania (Chainsaw Records, 2006), feels like Portland partytime incarnate—complete with trashy […]
Posted inMusic
Firestarter PDX
Brendan Canty’s Pyro Time Capsule
FUGAZI’S BRENDAN CANTY has a new project: Dude scouts out a town with a good music scene, buys a house set for demolition, has some local bands play live in its living room, then burns it to the ground the next day. All this is filmed for his Burn to Shine DVD series, and the […]