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Summertime respites are pretty much mandatory for Portlanders who can still hear the faint echoes of raindrops at the dawn of each day. For me, the unplugged therapy of Mt. Hood camping, kayaking, lakeing, and hiking is just the panacea for a steaming pile of societal noise. I escaped there recently, with the albums featured […]
For a farm, summer brings a much-needed influx of sunshine to fuel the sustenance growing in the ground. The landscape comes alive with all manner of vegetables and fruits, flowers, berries, and temporary rainbows catching the light in arcs of sprinkler spray. For Topaz Farm, it also signals the beginning of their intimate live music […]
Look, it’s a very good problem to have when it’s so tough to whittle down all the great new music in Portland for this here humble column. The city has churned out a glut of formidable albums in June alone that have been dominating my earholes (Orquestra Pacifico Tropicale’s El Poder, Lexie’s Halcyon Days, and BendreTheGiant’s […]
Pride Month, like most if not all designated awareness months, ought to just be imbued into the everyday fabric of society. Pride in who you are, what you believe, how you identify, and how you show up is really about the freedom to be whoever and whatever the hell you want to be, with whomever […]
The Spin Cycle setting has been on overload the past few weeks, with a heavy rotation of wide-ranging musical gems that run the genre gamut. And while I’d love to have some sort of thematic quotient to every edition of this humble column, aside from the following artists being talented, fierce queer forces of nature, […]
A favorite pastime of mine is to take long walks in the Buckman neighborhood, trying to determine from where the echoes of practicing musicians are originating. Depending on the day, an acoustic performance thrums through a barricade of bushes behind my yard, where an unseen troubadour routinely serenades the streets in anonymity. Multi-home applauses are […]
What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Music Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds. Like many dot-com era ideas ushered into use just below the radar in the […]
I didn’t set out to cover two Portland metal bands in successive editions of Spin Cycle, but here we are. The laws of the muses operating as they do, the heavier end of the audio spectrum has been dominating my brain space in the weeks leading up to summertime. Even a weeklong sojourn to Kauai […]
It probably goes without saying that it’s difficult to choose just three albums to feature for each edition of Spin Cycle. Inundated by a flurry of cultural crib sheets, personal recommendations, and last-minute rando diamonds in the rough, whittling down to what ends up in this column can be an internal struggle. And being off […]
Somehow, until recently, I hadn’t yet attended any live shows at the Get Down—the subterranean Central Eastside venue thriving since its 2022 opening. With a flush of seasonably accurate sunshine tantalizing even the most curmudgeonly amongst us this past weekend in Portland, I made it a point to touch base with the venue during a […]
If music truly is a salve for the weary heart, then I hope we’ve all been slathering it on nice and thick the past couple weeks. With the onrush of spring blossoms and the doldrums of wintertime peacing out in the rearview, it’s a time for transition, and for emphasizing the importance of breathing, of […]
Whether you’re an avid reader of these pages, or just a Portlander with a discerning live music landscape radar, it’s been hard to avoid story after story of independent live music venue closures and fundamental business model changes to some of the city’s most esteemed entertainment sites. Over the past 18 months, venerable establishments like […]
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