KaitO w/ Stratford 4 Tues March 5 Blackbird The scream occupies a very important place in music. Where would we be without the call-to-arms wail of Kathleen Hanna, the aching howl of Patti Smith, or the sexually frustrated shrieking of Prince? There’s nothing that exhibits passion more than a totally unbridled, from-the-gut holler, emitted from […]
Julianne Shepherd
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Endless Summer
Over and Over with Dressy Bessy
Dressy Bessy w/ Deathray Davies Sun March 3 Blackbird Dressy Bessy’s Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons was, by far, the catchiest indiepop record of 1999. It featured Tammy Ealom singing candy-coated melodies that would make Phil Spector faint, over a buzzing crunch of guitars, drums, and tambourines (courtesy Rob Green, Darren Albert, and Apples in Stereo’s […]
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Music for Everyone
Dismemberment Plan is the Band Next Door
Dismemberment Plan w/ Death Cab for Cutie, Aveo Sat Feb 23 Crystal Ballroom It seems like everyone in the world loves the Dismemberment Plan. Why, in the Mercury office alone, three out of four* employees would sell their homes to tour with them, even though that is a really hippie thing to do. How does […]
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No Blecchh
Blevin Blectum is a Fancy Sampler
Blevin Blectum w/ Lesser, Electric Birds, Nudge Sat Feb 23 Blackbird Perhaps it is the dirty “haus de snaus” animal comics and skits that accompany their records, but the technology-based music of Blectum from Blechdom is much like the sound of digital animals making merry lives–pecking corn off the ground, fighting each other and, of […]
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Mixing Pop With Commentary
Desaparecidos for the Greater Good
Desaparecidos w/ The Prom, 31knots Tues Feb 19 Meow Meow Lots of people were seen barfing in the streets after hearing the recent announcement that The Faint will be opening for No Doubt on a tour sponsored by MTV’s vapid Total Request Live. (The Faint being the sex-a-riffic new wave band on Omaha, NE’s smallish […]
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Out of the Basement
A Short History of a Portland Landmark
Jackpot! Recording Studio Five-Year Anniversary w/ The Standard, Braille Stars, The Most Secret Special Guest Portland Music Superstar of All Time. Fri Feb 8 Blackbird Larry Crane, world-famous studio engineer and editor of Tape Op, the best home recording magazine available, is a perfect example of how you can bring your interests out of the […]
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Suddenly, Electricity!
An Imperative iDM Show/Dance Move Guide
Technology loves Portland this week! Setting a record and a precedent, approximately fifty million live electronic-based and iDM acts are going to be performing in an extremely tiny space of time. So plug in your laptop, turn on your mini-disc recorder, and hit the streets with the Mercury‘s little guide to a bunch of famous-people […]
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Syndel the Slayer
Oldominion Emcee Cuts Everyone to Pieces
Syndel (of Oldominion) w/ Hungry Mob, Boom Bap Project, Children of the Thorn, more Sat Feb 2 Tonic Lounge & Oldominion Nightcrawlers Every Thursday Tonic Lounge As hiphop evolves in more interesting directions, production gets more experimental, and rhymes get tighter and more abstract. Right now, Portland is home to some of the most interesting […]
Posted inMovies & TV
The Tragedy in Lullabies
Documentary Pays Tribute to Nick Drake
A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drakedir. Berkvens Sun Jan 27, 7 pm Guild Theater An atmosphere of sorrow and mystery surrounds English songwriter Nick Drake. Not much is known about him, and there’s no footage of him performing live. His career was fairly stagnant and he never got very popular, despite the […]
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Saigon Kitchen
Saigon Kitchen 835 NE Broadway, 281-3669 3829 SE Division, 236-2312 Something I generally hold to be true is that it’s virtually impossible to fry cubes of tofu perfectly. Usually, either the cubes are cut too thick, and the pasty-white middle is squishy and mealy from undercooking… or they end up coming out something like potato […]
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Hero’s Lapdance
The Tragic Characters of Xiu Xiu
Xiu Xiu (say “shoe shoe”) w/Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Roy Tinsel Mon Jan 28 Blackbird Xiu Xiu aren’t musicians so much as playwrights–they create desperate, histrionic, sweeping songs, full of cut-apart decadence and noises spliced together theatrically. The gasping, drowning vocals of Jamie Stewart are thick and powerful, amid a barrage of drum machines, […]
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Poetry of the Everyday
Aesop Rock Writes What He Knows
Aesop Rock w/Cannibal Ox, Sleep, Massive Monkees, DJ Magneto Mon Jan 21 B Complex Aesop Rock claims he smokes four packs of cigarettes a day. Logistically, this seems impossible–that equals 80 cigarettes in a 24-hour period, which would seemingly require him to smoke every second of the day, including, but not limited to such activities […]