MY FIRST EXPOSURE to the Curtains was at a house party. In a sweaty basement crammed with drunken revelers and fashionistas, an unlikely trio played in the corner. Like some kind of autistic lounge jazz combo, guitarist Chris Cohen and company stared at the beer-soaked floor as they squiggled out tiny melodic fragments and slippery […]
Josh Blanchard
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Meet Your Candidate
Six Organs of Admittance is the Real Thing
ANYONE TUNED INTO THE shifting tide of underground music culture knows the past few years have found us inundated with a new wave of postmodern folkies. Most of those who have risen through the ranks of the nü-folk movement slip easily into a basic few templates: (1) the gentle, bearded songwriter (Devendra Banhart, Iron and […]
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Lichens!
The Psychic Nature of Being Robert Lowe
WAIT. ROB LOWE has a psychedelic project? The revered thespian who stole the show in Wayne’s World and St. Elmo’s Fire? Oh, hold on, this is Robert Lowe! This (infinitely hipper) Lowe is part of a new breed of millennial art-rockers who—as they slip into their 30s and the tides of time and tinnitus start […]
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Who Ate Who?
The Robot Ate Me’s Bright Uncertainty
THE REAL MEANING of “pop music” in this day and age is highly debatable. Does it mean manufactured radio hits? Sugarcoated twee singalongs? Universally compelling heartstring yankers? Or, as in the case of the Robot Ate Me, something far more strange and exotic? While predominately referred to as a band, the Robot Ate Me is […]
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Whole Meal Deal
Silver Sunshine Treks through Weird Woods
AT NO OTHER TIME in American history has experimentation and sweeping social change accelerated so quickly as the 1960s. It was a decade that left a brand on culture (a scar, some might argue) and since the very nanosecond when the Love Generation picked its final flower, creative types have revisited its art and music […]
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Psychotropic Roundtable
What is Psychedelic Music, Anyway?
Pullout: Mercury Music Issue
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Ouch!
Orthrelm Hurts So Good
ARE YOU THE TYPE of person who looks forward to your yearly dental appointment? Would your mother be wealthy if she had a dime for every time she said, “Don’t pick at that”? Do you enjoy the occasional flogging? Well then, my masochist friend, do I have the band for you! Only in the high-frequency […]
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Out of the Swamps
The Tiny Worlds of Gregg Kowalsky
IF YOU LIKE YOUR shit mellow, and I mean m-e-l-l-o-w, then Oakland-based ambient artist Gregg Kowalsky might be just the man for you. Kowalsky is part of a new breed of collegiate, tech-savvy sound scientists lurking in the fringes of indie music—bearded transcendentalists who are just as comfortable grasping an acoustic guitar in their hands […]
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Piercing Your Heart
Folksinger Josephine Foster’s Enchanted Arrow
THERE’S SOMETHING very witch-like about folk chanteuse Josephine Foster. Whether it’s due to the Delphian renaissance threads throughout her music or Foster’s striking, hawk-like looks, every review she’s received from here to New York City seems to include the words, “witch” or, perhaps more disturbingly, “witch burning.” Well, worry not Josephine—we Oregonians can tell a […]
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The Devil’s Diva
Jarboe’s Dark Path
MOST SINGERS are an easily classified lot. There are the Crooners, the Screamers, the Showboaters, the Rappers, and the Yarlers (i.e., post-grunge, post-Eddie Vedder vocal manglers), and that’s pretty much that. Well, then there’s Jarboe. You would expect one of America’s most brooding and versatile vocalists to have lived quite a colorful life, and you […]
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Apocalypse Now
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum Sings Earth’s Doom
MY FIRST EXPOSURE to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum came after I stepped into the Crystal Ballroom for a seemingly innocuous rock show. Most of the night’s attendees were caught off guard as a menagerie of imposing modern Dadaists sporting mohawks and tattered tunics proceeded to tear through a set that ran the gamut from gothic chamber […]