TODD WALBERG On his 2016 debut album Basement Behavior, Seance Crasher’s Kevin Rafn dialed in the sound he’d been exploring over the previous few years. With the help of producer Riley Geare (Unknown Mortal Orchestra), Rafn fortified the lo-fi bedroom aesthetic of his early EPs and steadied his tentative (but undeniably tuneful) synth-pop with tighter […]
Ben Salmon
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Ennui, Crock-Pot Songs, and Arctic Flowers’ New Album, Straight to the Hunter
Ennui, Crock-Pot songs, and Arctic Flowers’ new album, Straight to the Hunter.
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I Guess This Is Growing Up: Lee Corey Oswald Returns from the Brink with Darkness, Together
Dan Stanton About four years passed between the release of Portland pop-punk band Lee Corey Oswald’s 2014 debut Regards and its follow-up, Darkness, Together, out this week on A-F Records. For Dan Silver (guitar/vocals), Lee Ellis (guitar/vocals), and Corey Ciresi (drums/vocals), however, that four-year span came during a time of their lives that tends to […]
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Loose’s Debut EP Keeps Things Nice and Tight
Loose is a trio of local scene veterans who know how to keep things nice and tight, as evidenced by their new EP Haircut. The band plays jittery, jangling punk rock, full of sharp corners and sneaky hooks that sound like typical lo-fi fare until later, when you find them lingering in your brain long […]
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EP Review: Loose, Haircut
The Portland Trio’s Debut Keeps Things Nice and Tight
Loose’s debut EP keeps things nice and tight.
Posted inRecord Reviews
Robin Bacior’s Light It Moved Me Is an Exploration of Subtlety
The Portland Singer/Songwriter Delves into Illuminating Jazz Sounds
The Portland singer/songwriter delves into illuminating jazz sounds.
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Collate Talks DIY, Self-Promotion, and Their New Album Liminal Concerns
JERAMY TUCKER If you want to find out more about Portland post-punk trio Collate, you’ll have to go to a show and talk to ’em. That’s because the band has decided to stay mostly off the internet. A Google search turns up very little. There’s no flowery Facebook bio, no pithy Twitter feed—just a basic […]
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Collate’s Punk Rock Response to the Modern Age
The Portland Band Talks DIY, Self-Promotion, and Their New Album Liminal Concerns
The Portland band talks DIY, self-promotion, and their new album Liminal Concerns.
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Babehoven’s Lo-Fi Debut EP Shows Sky-High Potential
On Babehoven’s Bandcamp page, there is a collection of five demos (under the name Sleep) that could accurately be described as “lo-fi.” The note below the songs makes no bones about it: “Written and recorded… using GarageBand and a 2011 MacBook Pro microphone,” it says. However rough those five cuts may be, they accomplish the […]
Posted inRecord Reviews
EP Review: Babehoven, Sleep
The Portland Band’s Lo-Fi Debut Shows Sky-High Potential
The Portland band’s lo-fi debut shows sky-high potential.
Posted inMusic
On Sparkle Hard, Stephen Malkmus Sounds Like a Man at the Top of His Game
STEPHEN MALKMUS Mon 8/5 Star Theater Giovanni Duca For the past three decades, Stephen Malkmus has approached his music career with a sort of oblique nonchalance, whether he’s fronting ’90s indie giants Pavement or piloting a solo-ish career with his band the Jicks. In a world where so many artists must hustle to make something […]
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The Sidekicks Chase the Perfect Pop Song with Happiness Hours
NICK FANCHER Writing the perfect pop song is a lofty goal, one that’s out of the reach of most songwriters. But Steve Ciolek is not most songwriters. The 29-year-old is the frontman of the Sidekicks, a Columbus, Ohio, quartet whose two most recent albums—2015’s Runners in the Nerved World and this year’s Happiness Hours—are packed […]