WEDNESDAY 11/19

WAMPIRE, GRACE MITCHELL, SOCCER MOMS, NEW SOCIAL OUTCASTS
(Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE César E. Chávez) See All-Ages Action!

TTNG, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE, MYLETS
(Star Theater, 13 NW 6th) LA's Sargent House record label is a reliable curator of good bands that generally live in the heavy/metal/prog/post-rock/post-punk wing of underground rock 'n' roll, and for the past month, three of those bands have been creeping across the country spreading the label's gospel. The headliner is TTNG, formerly This Town Needs Guns, an English band that expertly walks a line between math rock's technical showmanship and pop's soaring melodies on its 2013 album 13.0.0.0.0. They sound like what would happen if Pinback and Don Caballero had a baby and fed it only emo's catchiest hits. Opening are Mylets, a young one-man band from Indiana whose jittery crunch-pop is full of feels, and Emma Ruth Rundle, whose penchant for swirling, slow-burning epics carries over from her loud post-rock bands Marriages and Red Sparowes into her more subdued solo work. BEN SALMON

THURSDAY 11/20

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
(Moda Center, 1 Center Ct) See My, What a Busy Week!, and read our article on Justin Timberlake.

THE MEAN JEANS, MORONS, THE LONESOME BILLIES, KEPI GHOULIE
(White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th) See My, What a Busy Week!

DEERHOOF, BUSDRIVER, GO DARK
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside) On La Isla Bonita, the 12th album from long-running experimental rock quartet Deerhoof, the band waste no time in diving into their unique and edgy blend of off-kilter pop on the opening track, "Paradise Girls." The song sees the group paying tribute to some of their favorite women rockers. While the Madonna reference in the album title is evident, drummer Greg Saunier cites other heros like Joan Jett, Janet Jackson, Kim Gordon, and Kathleen Hanna as inspirations behind the song. It shouldn't be forgotten that Deerhoof's own bassist/vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki could easily be included in that list of legendary shredders and singers. Along with Saunier, Matsuzaki has pushed the limit on how many ways a band can reinvent itself in the modern era. Unsurprisingly, La Isla Bonita is excellent. It's also one of the group's most vibrant releases in their two-decade-long career. CHIPP TERWILLIGER

SUZUKI JUNZO, SPECTRUM CONTROL, MEMORY METAL
(Mothership Music, 3611 NE MLK) Japan seems to instill in its underground artists a sense of restlessness, consciously or unconsciously urging them to be as prolific and versatile as possible. Suzuki Junzo has certainly heeded the call over the course of his career. The guitarist is a member of at least four bands and has recorded with fellow eager spirits like Acid Mothers Temple leader Kawabata Makoto. Great as all that work is, I prefer it when Junzo's on his own, improvising cosmic psych-blues that feels akin to the wandering spirit of local hero Michael Hurley. Junzo arrives in town on the heels of a new album, simply titled 7, which finds him scraping and petting the strings of his guitar to coax out sounds both soothing and jarring. ROBERT HAM

J MASCIS, LULUC, PETE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
(Dante's, 350 W Burnside) I interviewed J Mascis a few years back, and if you've ever watched a video of the Dinosaur Jr. frontman getting questioned, then you have a pretty good idea how well it went. Often when you're interviewing someone, you can leave a few seconds of silence at the end of a question that the interviewee will end up filling, usually with a more interesting quote than the one he or she had just given you. Not so with Mascis. He's gonna sound like he just woke up, and he's not offering much more than two words per question. But here's what I did manage to pull out of him: He prefers playing drums, and he'd rather play with a band than solo. So it's probably a safe bet that putting out a second solo acoustic-guitar record wasn't his favorite thing. Unluckily for him, Tied to a Star is proof that he's pretty damn good at it. MATTHEW W. SULLIVAN

DAVID BAZAN, PASSENGER, DAVID DONDERO
(Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie) In 1999, David Bazan played an after-school concert at my small-town high school north of Seattle under the name Pedro the Lion. That band's first album, It's Hard to Find a Friend, had just been out for a matter of months, but the hype around it—at least in the Seattle area—was unavoidable. While the guy playing painfully slow songs from the edge of the stage sounded little like the "band" on the album, the power of the bleak narratives was undeniable. On his latest release, David Bazan + Passenger String Quartet, Bazan collaborates with a Seattle chamber group to give new life to some old songs. The narratives are lyrically just as bleak as they've always been, but the Bazan who's singing them sounds very different. His voice no longer wallows in the dreariness of his tales, but approaches the songs with a passion and excitement he couldn't express 15 years ago. JOSHUA JAMES AMBERSON

MODERN KIN, THE GHOST EASE, KITHKIN
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) It's been a journey for Drew Grow, to say the least. After several years of folk-based project the Pastors' Wives, a severe car crash, and thousands of dollars of hospital bills, Grow and two of the Pastors' Wives—Kris Doty and Jeremiah Hayden—reformed sonically and started Modern Kin. In roughly a year's time, it's taken impressive shape. Their catchiest number, "Abandon," somehow maintains an overarching cataclysmic tone with the underbelly of a straightforward vocal hook. What really puts it over the top is Grow's pure force. It's not just vocals coming from his diaphragm, but something cathartic, with a near gospel flair—remnants of the Pastors' Wives, perhaps. It's a release that has to be witnessed, and you can do just that at Mississippi Studios tonight. ROBIN BACIOR

SWIM SWAM SWUM, MONTHS, DOWN GOWN
(The Know, 2026 NE Alberta) Portland pop-rock trio Swim Swam Swum play a style of guitar-driven indie-rock that sounds like it was ripped straight from the basements of Chapel Hill in the early '90s. Echoing the spirit of great, early Merge Records acts like Superchunk and Butterglory, it serves as a hearty dose of comfort food for the mind and soul, while also providing a straight-up adrenalin shot to the heart. Swim Swam Swum's only album, 2009's Circumpolar Westerlies, is comprised of a dozen tuneful tracks that spill over with a heightened sense of youthful energy. Tonight marks the band's first show in over a year, and while they've got nothing else lined up at the moment, here's hoping they continue to warm bars and venues with their unbridled joy and vigor for the rest of the winter months. CT

FRIDAY 11/21

TRENTEMØLLER, T.O.M. AND HIS COMPUTER
(Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell) Read our article on Trentemøller.

ZOUAVES, SHREDDED DECADES, ALMOST DARK
(Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick) The songs on Hydracast, the second album from Zouaves, hang slightly askew, like a crooked picture frame. But the more you try to adjust them to hang square, and the more you dig into addictive tracks like "Trubaird" and "Wear It Thin," the more you realize the Portland band designed this off-kilter effect deliberately. These guitar-driven tunes are hatched from pop kernels—much the same as Night Mechanic, with whom Zouaves share a couple of members—but they're given expansive, arty leanings. Psychedelic rumblings, tempo shifts, and haunting melodies all find room on Hydracast, and the group, which finally plays a long-overdue release show for the eight-song album, cultivates a smoky atmosphere of strange, nectarous beauty. NED LANNAMANN

AGES AND AGES, 1939 ENSEMBLE, HOOKERS
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) Divisionary, the sophomore full-length from Portland pop crusaders Ages and Ages, emerged as an early contender for not just Portland album of the year, but album of the year anywhere, period. As the curtain begins to creep closed on 2014, the band's uplifting cadences and crazy-catchy indie-pop nuggets are still stuck in our heads, and the album's title track is becoming something of a timeless anthem. The band's spent the better part of the year on tour, which included memorable sets at Pickathon as well as a slot at the venerable Newport Folk Festival. Tonight's show—the first of Ages and Ages' two nights at Mississippi Studios—is a diverse slice of the Portland music soundscape, with avant-jazz crew 1939 Ensemble and decadent rock diorama of Hookers. RYAN J. PRADO

SATURDAY 11/22

LEADING LADIES IN MUSIC AWARDS 2014
(Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell) See My, What a Busy Week!

AGES AND AGES, SEAN FLINN AND THE ROYAL WE, BLESST CHEST
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) See Friday's listing.

AVI BUFFALO, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside) Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg took a disproportionately long time to craft the follow-up to his band's striking self-titled 2010 debut, Avi Buffalo. But if the recent At Best Cuckold has an inevitable tinge of disappointment built into it, it suits Zahner-Isenberg's weary, burned-out-youth songs. "So What" is a bright-morning wake-up call, as sleepy seeds and hangovers are rubbed away in favor of moving into the light; by the time track eight, "Think It's Gonna Happen Again," rolls around, the sun is dipping behind the horizon, and the familiar addictions come calling. There's a guitar-gnarled West Coast psychedelia-lite tinge to At Best Cuckold, but it doesn't feel like Avi Buffalo spent all their time on the tour bus looking in rock 'n' roll's rear-view mirror. Rather, the album's glossy-eyed bohemianism comes across as naturally cultivated and hard earned, as if Zahner-Isenberg and his band have been through all that same shit—the youthful exuberance, the drugs, the sex, the pleasure and disappointing pain—that previous generations went through, and reached the same sad, world-wise conclusions. NL

ASSS, ANIMAL BODIES, WEIRD CANDLE, BLOOM OFFERING
(Beacon Sound, 3636B N Mississippi) Vancouver, NC's Animal Bodies really know how to push people's buttons. Their music gets in on the ground floor of the subconscious, causing a visceral response, with driving post-punk done on machines—a genre they refer to as "hard beat" (it's an industrial fan's dream come true). Haunting soundscapes and dissonant lead guitar give way to the best elements of gothic minimalism, with an exquisitely tortured voice hissing over the top. I was blown away by their 2012 album Kiss of the Fang and couldn't wait for more from this deliciously dark duo. Now they're touring in support of their latest release, The Killing Scene, so here's your chance to visit the hard beat gods of darkness. CHRISTINA BROUSSARD

BLOCKHEAD, ELAQUENT, MUNESHINE
(Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison) Tony Simon, the NYC-based DJ/producer who records and performs under the name Blockhead, has provided a solid, silvery backbone for the underground hiphop community since getting one of his beats on Aesop Rock's 1999 EP, Appleseed. His squalid productions ripple with dark energy emanating from their cores, which in turn urges collaborators like Aesop, Cage, and Open Mike Eagle to mine some strange lyrical depths. Blockhead's own albums, including the recently unleashed Bells and Whistles, continue this theme but exhibit an openness and slightly dosed aesthetic that will leave your muscles feeling loose and rubbery. RH

CHARLIE MEGIRA, THE PYNNACLES, TRENCH
(The Know, 2026 NE Alberta) Charlie Megira lives in Berlin these days, but he could just as easily have come through a space-time wormhole armed with a guitar and a woolly pompadour like some zombie-freak surf-rocker. In reality, Megira is from the Beit-She'an Valley region of Israel. Megira and a group dubbed the Modern Dance Club dropped the Love Police LP late in 2013 via Guitars and Bongos Records, postulating an infectious hybrid of twangy surf-rock and cowboy punk that pasted Megira as a modern-day Jerry Lee Lewis with a case of the creeps. For his first stateside tour, Megira has assembled the Beit-She'an Valley Hillbillies, and I swear if you miss this show you're going to want to punch yourself in the eye. RJP

FLEETWOOD MAC
(Moda Center, 1 Center Ct) In Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, Bob Stanley calls Fleetwood Mac's story "maybe the most extraordinary and unlikely in all pop." If you don't know why Stanley makes such an assertion—in other words, if your knowledge of the Mac's convoluted history begins at "Rhiannon"—it is time for you go forth to the vinyl bins. Fleetwood Mac started as a British blues band led by guitarist Peter Green; they evolved quickly, churning out some of the most gorgeous records ever created ("Albatross," "Man of the World," "Oh Well"). Green lost his mind, and second guitarist Jeremy Spencer joined a cult; a lot more happened before Californians Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham came aboard in '75. Tonight's edition is the long-running Buckingham/Nicks lineup, augmented by the returning Christine McVie, who was absent when Fleetwood Mac came through Portland last year, and who is responsible for the group's most saccharine mom-jeans moments. Track down the new reissue of 1969's Then Play On and discover why late-period Mac hits like "Everywhere" are fabric-softened fluff. NL

SUNDAY 11/23

MR. GNOME, YOUNG TONGUE
(Dante's, 350 W Burnside) See My, What a Busy Week!

JEFF BRIDGES AND THE ABIDERS, JESSIE BRIDGES
(Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie) See My, What a Busy Week!

COLD SPECKS, THE DOMESTICS
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside) Cold Specks' debut full-length album, 2012's I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, was a sparse, orchestral collection combining elements of gospel, blues, and soul with the dark and brooding songwriting that is the calling card of Mute Records. This hybrid was branded "doom soul," and the album quickly earned glowing reviews and worldwide acclaim. The second Cold Specks release, Neuroplasticity, apparently intends to make us forget all about that first album. Cold Specks, the alias of Canadian-born Al Spx (itself an alias), has a complicated relationship with identity, and reinvention has remained a constant throughout her young career. Where her first album was minimalist, Neuroplasticity is immense, with an assault of drums, organs, guitars, horns, and virtually everything else that could fit on tape. Spx has of late been taken under the tutelage of Swans' Michael Gira, and Gira's influence (and voice, on "Exit Plan") can be heard throughout. The arrangements of Neuroplasticity may be more crowded and dense, but the songs are as dark as ever—if not darker—and Spx's chilling and commanding voice cuts through all the noise like a scalpel. SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY

MONDAY 11/24

CIRCA SURVIVE, TITLE FIGHT, TERA MELOS
(Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell) See All-Ages Action!

TUESDAY 11/25

STURGILL SIMPSON, LUCETTE
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) See My, What a Busy Week!, and read our article on Sturgill Simpson.

OBN IIIs, PAMPERS
(Dante's, 350 W Burnside) There seems to be a lot of overthinking when it comes to rock music these days. Austin's OBN IIIs don't think, they just do, cranking out raunchy, in-the-pocket rock 'n' roll that owes a lot to great bands like AC/DC, Van Halen, and even the Runaways. Their latest record, Third Time to Harm, is dripping with primal American rockisms; you can practically see frontman Orville Bateman Neeley III doing David Lee Roth scissor jumps while singing songs like "The Rockin' Spins" and "Queen Glom." It's big, dumb fun, and OBN IIIs are worth an hour of reconnecting with your lizard brain. MARK LORE

NOLALA, FOG FATHER, MÁSCARAS
(Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water) It's no secret that Portland bands love to collaborate—and with such a wide sea of musicians to work with, why wouldn't new projects appear like blips on a map? Such is the case for NoLaLa, a new project featuring members of Minden. This will be a debut performance of sorts for the band, who have been under wraps recording. Máscaras, a surf-rock trio and one of a plethora of musical outfits that include drummer Papi Fimbres, will kick off the night. Last but not least, '80s synth slingers Fog Father will seduce with their slow, sultry pop tracks for a well-rounded evening of shimmery, danceable tunes. RACHEL MILBAUER

G-EAZY, E-40, JAY ANT
(Roseland, 8 NW 6th) G-Eazy is a good-looking young white guy from Oakland who released a slew of mixtapes over the past several years as he zeroed in on his sound: downcast/deadpan raps à la Eminem, Drake, and Kendrick, set against the kind of twinkly, syrupy beats favored by Lil B and A$AP Mob. Along the way, he's racked up millions of views on YouTube and sold out shows across this post-Macklemore country of ours. G-Eazy's debut album, These Things Happen, is a respectable effort, with some cringe-worthy moments, but plenty of promise, too. That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that one of his openers tonight at the Roseland is E-40, arguably the most important figure in the history of the Bay Area's hiphop scene and a formative influence in G-Eazy's life. I understand how touring and selling tickets work, and E-40 certainly doesn't need me playing Captain Save-An-Earl, but still... this bill feels all wrong. BS