Ben Salmon

RED FANG Now with 100 percent more “feelings.” James Rexroad FOR THE PAST DECADE, Red Fang have excelled at writing hook-heavy hard-rock songs that kick down your door, grab you by the throat, and growl in your face—but, you know, in a good-natured sort of way. As metal bands go, the Portland quartet is the […]

On Only Ghosts, the Portland metal heroes deal with anger issues.

COURTESY CASTLE/VÁN RECORDS CASTLE Not pictured: Nathan Fillion. FOR THREE ALBUMS, Castle chose to cloak itself in darkness. The California heavy metal trio’s 2011 debut, In Witch Order, depicts a strangely unsettling image of sheep on the cover. Its opening track, “Descent of Man,” sets the band’s tone, pitting bassist Liz Blackwell’s dulcet snarl against […]

Castle’s new record Welcome to the Darkness lets in a sliver of light.

SUBROSA String driven things. Chris Martindale THE FIRST THING you’ll probably notice at a SubRosa show is that three women line the front of the stage. Second, two of them—Kim Pack and Sarah Pendleton, the kickass bookends on either side of kickass vocalist/guitarist Rebecca Vernon—are holding violins. Seeing SubRosa perform is not like seeing other […]

SubRosa evokes symphonic grandeur and rusticity.

BRANDY CLARK From the Northwest to Nashville. Pamela Littky COUNTRY SINGER/SONGWRITER Brandy Clark has lived in Nashville for years, but she grew up in Morton, Washington, a logging town of 1,100ish folks about 100 miles north of Portland. Her first childhood memory is the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Clark gets back to the […]

Brandy Clark’s sophomore record, Big Day in a Small Town, has some of the sharpest lines in country.

LVL UP Easily influenced, in the very best way. Shawn Brackbill FOR MANY indie rock fanatics, the first 11 seconds of LVL UP’s new album, Return to Love, will sound startlingly familiar. Opener “Hidden Driver” begins with a feverishly strummed acoustic guitar that’s ultra percussive and so distorted it sounds like it’s sizzling. It’s a […]

LVL UP cites their sources on their Sub Pop debut, Return to Love.

COURTESY OF HUSH RECORDS OVER THE PAST DECADE, more than 75 (!) musicians have played a part in Portland chamber-folk cornerstone Loch Lomond. But the centerpiece of this delicate spectacle has always been Ritchie Young, whose big voice and beautiful tunes have commanded the project’s spotlight since its 2003 debut, When We Were Mountains. That […]

It feels like a transitional album, but transitioning to what? Who knows.