There’s a special kind of spring that I believe only happens in Portland, the super-green spring that saturates everything and, in more than one way, could only be produced by our rainy winter season. All you can do is go with it, breathe deeply, and soak up every little bit of this season. Laura Gibson […]
Jim Withington
Posted inMusic
Bird on Bird
The Winged Opinion of Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird makes music that makes life worth living, but who wants to read another “this is so great, blah blah, my opinion is awesomer than you” feature, right? Instead, I consulted with an ornithologist friend of mine to figure out a question that has been burning in minds all across America: If Andrew Bird’s […]
Posted inMusic
Worse Drawn Boy
Bad! Badly Drawn Boy! Bad!
Badly Drawn Boy (AKA Damon Gough) appealed early in his career by somehow having the ability to pull off a line like, “If the chance should happen that I never see you again/Just remember that I’ll always love you.” Somehow, it actually felt profound, and even Nick Hornby himself asked Gough to do the complete […]
Posted inMusic
The Beauty and Mystery
Uncovering Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy inevitably gets compared to Andrew Bird, and that’s understandable: Even before I knew that FF’s auteur, Owen Pallett, uses a similar violin-plus-foot-pedal-looping-sampler technique, they seemed linked sonically. More than once I’ve found myself listening to Pallett’s 2006 release, He Poos Clouds, and thinking that Bird’s “Sovay” or “Banking on a Myth” was playing, […]
Posted inMusic
Give Up the Goat
Mountain Goats: Genius Alert!
The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle often gets painted as a one-man musical radness machine. He writes brilliantly about music on his amazing Last Plane to Jakarta website (including the aptly titled “Thirty Short Poems About My Favorite Black Metal Band”), pens spot pieces here and there for eMusic, and even received writing “workshop” credit in […]