Out Hud Thurs June 26 Meow Meow Out Hud makes careening dance music. A watery swathe of pedals and bass pushes their guitars forth, always in a forward, echoing motion, as if their pretty melodies are amplified through a megaphone and blown across a field. Last year’s full-length, S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. (Kranky), fonks it in a […]
Julianne Shepherd
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Campers! Are Ya in the Room?
Rock Camp For Girls Showcase Lowdown
More bands should throw handfuls of candy to the audience at the end of their sets. Also, if you can’t hear yourself onstage, demand the sound lady to turn up the volume. Just keep asking! These things and more were learned at the Third Annual Rock and Roll Camp for Girls Camper Showcase last Saturday […]
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Everything is Not Okay
The Jealous Sound’s Dichotomous Pop-Rock
The Jealous Sound Mon June 23 Nocturnal For awhile, The Jealous Sound were trapped in a cliché–the one where the band signs with major label, the major label loses money/distribution deal and shelves band’s record, yet won’t allow band to retrieve the rights to its own music. But this is not the part where I […]
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Master of One
Abstract Rude is on Some Depth
Abstract Rude/Abstract Tribe Unique Fri June 20 Ash Street Abstract Rude’s rhymes stir something spiritual in the otherwise-barren wasteland that is my faith in the preternatural. When I mention this to him, he has a simple explanation: “The first time in my life I picked up a microphone was in a Baptist church, so the […]
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Ocean Goddess
Whale Rider’s Epic Realism
Whale Rider dir. Caro Opens Fri June 13 Fox Tower Like all good epic tales, Whale Rider begins with birth and death. Two deaths, actually. A woman is giving birth to twins, a boy and a girl; the boy–meant to become the leader of Ngati Konohi people–is stillborn, and takes his mother with him. The […]
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Discourse in the Discotheque
Le Tigre’s Electro-Pop Raditude
Le Tigre Fri June 13 Roseland NYC-based electro-pop trio Le Tigre’s most recent release, Remix, is “their vision for a hardcore dance genre infused with radical politics.” It can bump a system. Do you have any idea about why there isn’t more pop dance music that’s… Kathleen Hanna, Le Tigre’s lead vocalist: Smart? Yeah. Kathleen: […]
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The Power of Pop
New Pornographers: They’re Just Really Good
New Pornographers Thurs June 12 Aladdin Theater “I’m impressed by people who can write really good pop songs,” says Carl Newman–a man who writes some really good pop songs, himself, in his band the New Pornographers. “I’ve been listening to Outrageous Cherry, and I’m really struck by how great the songwriting is. They don’t have […]
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Tuff Gnarl
Elusive Band Gets Messy, Dirty
Reeks & the Wrecks Sun June 8 Disjecta This is what I’m talking about: muddy, intuitive rock rusted up by the blues, but only because the guitars sound bent and coiled and out of whack. Two guitars, a set of drums, and a huge gritty sound stewing in its own dirty foreboding language. Reeks & […]
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Radio Free Nowhere
When people talk about corporations controlling what we think, they’re talking about Clear Channel. By now, you may even be used to their ubiquity, having seen their name at the bottom of most Portland billboards, or heard their tag on their local radio stations, like 1190 KEX, K103, 105.9, 620 AM, and Z100. But when […]
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Will You Go There? Yes, You Will!
Sista Social: Cable Access’ Most Charming Star
Cable Television: I’ve always felt it to be a scourge of humanity, the eater of free time in a listless American society bent on numbing its brain cells with as much distracting material as possible–the last refuge of those trying to avoid the (admittedly difficult) act of living out an individualistic and concurrently fulfilling existence. […]
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Jarboe Returns
A Rare Performance from the Ex-Swans Vocalist
The Living Jarboe Mon May 26 Blackbird Jarboe is in the habit of assuming personas. Through the astonishing tone of her soprano, she transforms into a little girl; add a quavering vibrato, and she becomes a scorned woman; give it a low, barking growl, and she’s a poignant demon. There is no other living performer […]
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Percussion Junction
Black Eyes’ Drummy, Dubby Punk
Black Eyes Wed May 21 Red & Black Café To concoct their surging clatter of noisy, scratchy, rhythmic punk, Black Eyes employs two drummers (Dan and Mike), two bass players (Hugh and Jacob), a guitarist (Daniel), and two vocalists: a pretty unique setup that shifts periodically throughout the course of their live performance–which, by the […]