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Monday, Dec 3

Mississippi Records 15th Anniversary: Part Two
Celebrate Mississippi Records’ big 1-5 with the soulful tunes of Ural Thomas and the Pain, Lonnie Holley, Michael Hurley, and Toody Cole. Come for the music, stay for the slideshow presenting each and every terrible mistake the record label has made. Fun! (8 pm, Hollywood Theatre, $10) ALEX ZIELINSKI

John Maus, Schaus
John Maus’ latest record, Addendum, wavers somewhere between catchy, obscure, and experimental—it's a little bit reminiscent Gary Numan or the composer Vangelis. After releasing 2011’s We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, Maus spent six years living in a small Minnesota town, finishing his PhD in political philosophy, and building the synthesizers he would use to record Addendum. On the new album, he holds pop at a frustrating, compelling arm’s length. Maus doesn’t just play music—he wrestles with it and attempts to wrench meaning from it. (8:30 pm, Wonder Ballroom, $20-22) ISABEL LYNDON

JMSN, August 08
The Detroit-hailing multi-instrumentalist, producer, and singer/songwriter brings his R&B slow jams back through the Doug Fir Lounge for the Portland stop on a tour supporting his latest full-length Whatever Makes U Happy. (9 pm, Doug Fir, $15-17)

Suuns, Graham Van Pelt
For more than a decade, Suuns has been fusing post-punk, krautrock, electronic sounds, and psychedelic vibes into something weirdly catchy and undeniably appealing. But where their first three albums felt like the work of serious artists with furrowed brows, this year’s Felt is looser, groovier, more spacious, and easier to embrace. It sounds like art-rock underground heroes Clinic and art-rock arena-fillers Radiohead found a pot full of golden, pulsing pop songs at the end of the Black Moth Super Rainbow. And then they went to space, recorded them, and buried them under the floorboards of their rocket-ship. (9 pm, Mississippi Studios, $15) BEN SALMON

Dune
Once upon a time in the '80s, George Lucas asked David Lynch if he wanted to make a Star Wars movie. Lynch got a migraine at the mere concept of ewoks and said no. Then he went off and got Agent Cooper to fight Sting in a leather diaper while Captain Picard played a weird guitar and carried a pug into battle. He called this glorious mess Dune. It is an ungainly, lumbering thing carrying only faint whiffs of its source material and a strong stink of Toto on the soundtrack. As an adaptation? Trash. As a fever-dream parade of ambitious failings? Fascinating. (7 pm, Clinton Street Theater, $5) BOBBY ROBERTS

My People's Market Holiday Pop-Up
My People’s Market has put on some impressively massive functions for POC entrepreneurs to showcase their creations and reach their target audience in a fun and family-friendly environment. This year, My People’s Market is bringing its holiday pop-up marketplace boasting more than 30 POC-owned vendors to the newly remodeled Lloyd Center every day until December 29. Happy Holidays indeed! (10 am, Lloyd Center Mall) JENNI MOORE


Tuesday, Dec 4

Matt & Kim, The Knocks, Good Samaritan
Indie- and dance pop isn’t my typical area of musical enjoyment, nor do I seek it out in a live setting. So I consider it a fateful blessing that I had nothing better to do during Matt and Kim’s set at Capitol Hill Block Party 2014. After stumbling upon the Brooklyn duo/couple’s performance, I quickly deduced that Matt Johnson (vocals/keyboards) and Kim Schifino (drums) bring an insane amount of energy to their bubbly live sets and are some of the most expressive onstage musicians I’ve come across. The duo took a hiatus in 2017 (after Schifino’s ACL injury), but now they’re back on tour on the strength of their new album Almost Everyday. Don’t miss ’em. (8 pm, Crystal Ballroom, $38, all ages) JENNI MOORE

Pinback, Morricone Youth
Pinback’s pristine compositions are clockwork marvels, stunning little contraptions powered by the kind of magic that only gets more impressive as one’s critical eye moves closer. Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV have written a number of mixtape-ready crushers made for post-breakup moldering, songs that drop from the brain into the heart, but the duo’s chilly precision has a way of banishing the murk and muck of a good wallow before everything gets too maudlin. It’s a joy to bear witness to the impossibly smooth interplay between Crow and Smith, their voices and guitars bound up like soulmates, each song a testament to human connection. (8:30 pm, Wonder Ballroom, $19.99-25, all ages) CHRIS STAMM

Reptaliens, Shadowgraphs, Wet Dream
Cole and Bambi Browning bring their Portland-based psych pop outfit down to the Doug Fir to head up a hometown show that doubles as a release celebration for the latest album from like-minded locals Shadowgraphs. (9 pm, Doug Fir, $10)

B-Movie Bingo: Virtuosity
Your monthly opportunity to literally check off a bingo card full of B-movie clichés! This month: '90s Hollywood handled the emergence of the internet with all the skill and grace of a drunk octopus, but director Brett Leonard was maybe its most inept online visionary. In 1992 he crafted one of the dumbest, ugliest, most unintentionally hilarious movies of the decade by burying Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey under 15 tons of lo-res ridiculousness called The Lawnmower Man. Because the film industry is like the exact opposite of a meritocracy, Paramount let him make another movie about virtual reality and the internet, and guess what? He buried Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe under another 15 tons of lo-res dogshit called Virtuosity, which is essentially a ripoff of Demolition Man but without any of that film's satire, color, charm, or action. It may lack as a work of art when it comes to things like coherence or skill, but you will see young Russell Crowe's naked, shiny ass. (7:30 pm, Hollywood Theatre, $7-9) BOBBY ROBERTS

P-Lo, Allblack
Bay Area rapper P-Lo (of the Heartbreak Gang) comes up the coast for a headlining show supporting his 2017 album, More Than Anything, with frequent collaborator Allblack on hand to round out the all ages bill. (8 pm, Paris Theater, $20, all ages)

Tara Westover
The 34th season of Literary Arts' Portland Arts & Lectures series kicks off with a visit from Tara Westover, author of the New York Times bestseller, Educated: A Memoir. (7:30 pm, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, $90-345)


Wednesday, Dec 5

Elle King, Flora Cash
Elle King hails from Brooklyn, but her twangy badassery could be confused for an "Austin-tatious" Texan. Part Southern rockabilly, part blues-pop, King's music constantly keeps you on your toes, and makes you dance a few different styles along the way. Though King is the offspring of Rob Schneider and model London King, she does her own thing; she taught herself how to play the banjo, she writes her own tunes, and she got herself signed with no help from pops. (6:30 pm, Crystal Ballroom, $29.50) ROSE FINN

Metallica
Not just monsters of rock, Metallica is like the Godzilla of metal, giant, radioactive, still stomping around arenas, delivering atomic blasts of noise and rage designed to set whole cities on fire. For the first time in a long time, Portland is set to get knocked over like a cardboard skyscraper by this grand old kaiju of metal when their "Worldwired" tour hits town. (7:30 pm, Moda Center, $133 and up)

Andy Shauf, Tomberlin
Andy Shauf’s foam cushion drum tones and gentle, Kermit-y chirrup belie his material’s epic narrative scope. The Canadian songwriter’s 2016 album, The Party, is a dense collection of overlapping vignettes set at the same house party. Shauf imbues his diverse and neurotic cast of characters with an almost Salingerian depth: There’s that one perpetually early attendee, an amateur magician, a possessive asshole convinced he’s being cheated on by his girlfriend because he can’t find her anywhere, and poor, poor “Alexander All Alone”—who dies at the party before remanifesting as an unfulfilled spirit. Shauf’s preoccupation with social drama might feel decidedly current, but much of this music sounds like it could have been made before punk broke, from the Harry Nilsson-esque chromatic playfulness of “The Magician” and “The Worst in You” all the way through to achingly tuneful closer “Martha Sways,” which evokes Judee Sill’s best work. (9 pm, Mississippi Studios, $20) MORGAN TROPER

The I, Anonymous Show
One of the greatest Portland comedy shows returns—and with more guaranteed laughs! It’s the monthly I, Anonymous Show which takes the Mercury’s wildest I, Anonymous column submissions and presents them alongside a panel of hilarious comedians. This month features pinch-hitter and Mercury 2018 “Genius of Comedy” Kate Murphy, hosting a panel including Neeraj Srinivasan, Shain Brenden, and Dylan Jenkins! Face it, you need some laughs, and the I, Anonymous Show will absolutely provide ’em! (7:30 pm, Curious Comedy Theater, $10) WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

Lemaitre
The Norwegian electronic duo headed up by Ketil Jansen and Ulrik Denizou Lund bring their blend of house, electronic rock, and nu-disco to the Wonder Ballroom stage for the Portland stop on a North American tour. (8:30 pm, Wonder Ballroom, $18-22, all ages)

Scrooged
Richard Donner has a tendency to let the manic energy of his filmmaking slide into shrillness. Films that played as madcap hijinks on release (The Goonies, Lethal Weapon 2) are, on second viewing, just annoying noise. But 1988’s Scrooged—arguably the last great movie Donner made—is different. Rewatches reveal an underlying sweetness and patience it didn’t get credit for at the time—audiences and critics were likely distracted by its on-the-nose parodies of then-crass-but-now-quaint television programming and the evergreen joy of seeing Carol Kane swing a toaster like a mace. But Bill Murray’s expert blend of acid and schmaltz (along with the genius idea of making Bob Goldthwait into Bob Cratchit) turn what could have been a mean-spirited misfire of soured sentimentality into a Christmas gift that is both 100 percent of the decade that spawned it, and better than that decade deserved. (8:30 pm, Mission Theater) BOBBY ROBERTS

No Aloha, Plastic Weather, Cool American
Local indie-pop trio No Aloha craft twinkling pop music, while peppering in just enough coarse texture to keep you pogoing on your toes. Tonight they premiere their star-studded music video for "The Big One," while Plastic Weather unleash a video of their own that was filmed at Oregon's beloved Enchanted Forest theme park. Likeminded locals Cool American round out the proceedings. (8:30 pm, Holocene, $8)


Thursday, Dec 6

Blossom, Maarquii, Amenta Abioto, Karma Rivera
This knockout bill brings together four of the city’s most talented performers: neo-soul enchantress Blossom, high femme rapper Maarquii, experimental hip-hop artist Amenta Abioto, and Karma Rivera, whose recently released debut EP is packed with fiery rhymes. As if you needed another reason to go: It’s free! (8 pm, Mississippi Studios, free) CIARA DOLAN

Queer Horror: Candyman
Carla Rossi’s bimonthly celebration of horror finishes off a year dedicated to the slasher with one of its absolute best and most creative entries, 1992's Candyman, based on a short story by Clive Barker. Slashers aren't particularly known for things like nuance, or thoughtfulness, or tendencies towards social progressivism and empathy—so seeing all those elements foregrounded in Bernard Rose's adaptation is startling—and that's before you get to the macabre artistry lent to the numerous (and fucked-up) kills, perfectly underscored by the stark compositions of Philip Glass. And if you take your seat in time for Carla's pre-show, you'll see the Candyman summoned live on stage while you sip from a Royale Brewing beer. (9:30 pm, Hollywood Theatre) BOBBY ROBERTS

Sir Richard Bishop
Sir Richard Bishop is best known as a founding member of experimental art-punk project Sun City Girls, which had a 26-year tenure that yielded over 50 albums. Since the band’s dissolution in 2007, Bishop has continued to release mind-warping guitar meditations that tap into a truly wordly aural contemplation—you oughta tap into it, too. (7 pm, Daedalus Books, $5) RYAN J. PRADO

PJ Morton, Grace Weber
The Grammy Award-winning R&B singer/songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist out of New Orleans, best known for his role as keyboardist in Maroon 5, and for his collaborations with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Adam Levine, Lil Wayne, and Busta Rhymes, brings the "More Gumbo" Tour to Portland for an intimate headlining show at the Doug Fir Lounge. (9 pm, Doug Fir, $20-22)

Back Fence PDX: Russian Roulette
It returns! If you like storytelling with a little danger, check out Back Fence PDX: Russian Roulette! Six entertaining storytellers spin a wheel of “prompts” (examples: “public nudity,” “breaking the law”) and whatever the wheel lands on, the person will have five minutes to come up with a five minute story on that subject! Trust me, it’s a goddamn hoot—and joining divine hosts B. Frayn Masters and Mindy Nettifee will be Shannon Balcom-Graves, Chris Williams, Kirsten Kuppenbender, Nathalie Weinstein, Brooks, and Alina Aliyar. (7:30 pm, Curious Comedy Theater, $16-22) WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

The Thesis
Another first Thursday means it’s time for another deep-dive into the exploding Portland hip-hop scene with the Thesis. This time the beloved monthly showcase celebrates its 4th anniversary with performances from Vinnie Dewayne, Load B, Nina Xo, Elton Aura, and Verbz. (9 pm, Kelly's Olympian, $10)

Fountaine, Chip Scout, Life Couch
Anime-loving rapper/producer Fountaine is young but prolific; his Bandcamp profile overflows with material, like his most recent LP, 2017’s H.F.I.L. (Hell for Infinite Losers). Across 16 tracks, Fountaine sings and raps behind aqueous beats that’re sometimes dazed and unsettling (“Scorprio”) and sometimes reverberating with danceable, Prince-inspired funk (“Dressed to Kill”). (8 pm, White Owl Social Club, free) CIARA DOLAN

Sweater Weather
Townshend's Distillery and ADX Portland join forces again to rightfully celebrate the warm 'n' fuzzy genius of hot cocktails in the winter season. Bring your own mug to sample the bartending skills by four of Portland's best: Natasha Miller of Deadshot, Halley Connelly of Elvis Room, Leah George Brown of AngelFace, and Larissa Brockmeyer of Palomar, with proceeds benefitting four charities of their choice. (6 pm, ADX, free)

Don't forget to check out our Things To Do calendar for even more things to do!