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Album Review
Posted inSpin Cycle

Spin Cycle: Go Your Own Way

Dispatches on three wildly different artists just doing what they gotta do, man.
Avatar photo by Ryan J. Prado

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 […]

Posted inSpin Cycle

Spin Cycle: Get Up to Get Down!

Earworm audio dispatches from formidable live acts near and far.
Avatar photo by Ryan J. Prado

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 […]

Posted inSpin Cycle

Introducing Spin Cycle, the Mercury’s New Album Review Column

Three albums to lock in with every two weeks: local, international, whatever we want! 
Avatar photo Ryan J. Prado

Welcome to Spin Cycle! It’s the biweekly aural hygiene you deserve in a handy-dandy cheat sheet format for albums of particular note from Portland and beyond! The Rose City is not unlike a homing beacon for discerning audiophiles, semi-professional appreciators of physical media, and folks who spend three-quarters of their waking lives with headphones fastened […]

Posted inMusic

Building Community with Portugal. The Man

Frontman John Gourley talks about the band’s new album Shish, the importance of community, and hardcore music.
Avatar photo Nolan Parker

John Gourley of Portland-based Portugal. The Man has been quietly dropping heat since the mid-2000s, well before the formation of P.TM and the band’s move from Wasilla, Alaska, down to Rip City. It’s been all community building of some sort or another: community building with other musicians and creatives, community building between cultures and traditions, […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: Puritan Themes, the Second Psych Masterpiece by Holy Sons in 2025

A cosmic road trip shifting between physical and interior worlds.
Avatar photo Jonathan Ludwig

According to the Puritan Themes press release, the album’s lead single “Chain Gang,” is “an imaginary take on if Cat Stevens had smoked a ton of salvia and taken a much darker route within the world of dense, story-telling songwriting.”  Experiences with salvia can be impactful. Fun trips where textures replicate themselves across various surfaces, […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: We’re Heading to the Lake With Portland’s Guitar

From bedroom beatmaking to touring the US with a band that has bad SEO and good sound. 
Avatar photo Ryan J. Prado

In an age where search engine optimization is a vital consideration for news headlines, business upstarts, and pretty much all creative endeavors, you’d be forgiven if you thought that a band called Guitar would drift into eternal, unsearchable obscurity. But ask Guitar brainchild Saia Kuli about the would-be gaffe, it’s the innate humor in such […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: The Pastoral Minimalism of Ann Annie’s El Prado

Real and imagined landscapes for where you are and where you’ve come from.
Avatar photo Jonathan Ludwig

Joan Mitchell made a name for herself in the art world through her large scale paintings featuring gestural, emotionally charged mark making. Working mainly as an abstract-expressionist, her paintings vibrate in her use of color and the movement of brushstrokes across the canvas. Though her paintings appear to be non-objective, as one spends time with […]

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