Album Reviews [CRUST PUNK] Tragedy is justly revered the world over for its dense and crepuscular take on crust punk, but an album-length masterpiece has eluded this staunchly DIY Portland quartet since its 2 ... More

Album Reviews [HOMETOWN R&B] Arjay lives, like many urban singers of his generation, at the intersection of hip-hop and R&B. If you know his name, it’s probably from the former: The Portland staple ha ... More

Album Reviews Plankton Wat, Spirits (Thrill Jockey) Weirdness scale: 5/10 What kind of weird: Watching the slow-motion moments in a David Lynch film on repeat weird. It would appear that the men of Eternal Tap ... More

Album Reviews [DEATH METAL] Hearing Configuration makes me realize how many times I’ve seen Order of the Gash in DIY settings with inadequate sound systems. These three good folks operate without ego, alway ... More

Album Reviews [FREE HARDCORE] The striking white stallion that adorns the cover of Zero Hour probably wasn’t meant as a sight gag, but it works as one: Palo Verde, you see, is no one-trick pony. Drummer Lauren ... More

Album Reviews [MINIMAL ROCK] A lot has changed since 2002. New president. Oklahoma City has a pro basketball team. Osama bin Laden? Totes dead. Another thing that’s changed in the 10 years since Pellet Gun ... More

Album Reviews [HEAVY HIP-HOP] Sandpeople’s Iame has gone through some fascinating changes in the past two years. Physically, he’s almost unrecognizable, having lost considerable weight after cutting alcoh ... More

Album Reviews [SUBDUED CRAFTSMANSHIP] Horse Feathers is a band of subtleties. Creating a rich sonic space using soft arrangements and minimalist instrumentation is quite a feat. Yet, the Portland band’s fou ... More

Album Reviews [HIP-HOP] We’re used to Serge Severe being the Sharon Jones of boom-bap (boom-Baptone?). On his last two records, the Portland MC has branded himself as a throwback, flowing over jazz and funk ... More

Album Reviews [FUTURE POP] I don’t think the members of Radiation City are perfectionists, but together they make some perfect pop music. The Portland quintet’s live shows sound like elaborately produced st ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Four years ago, I sat, a fresh-faced prospective intern, across from WW’s notoriously cantankerous assistant Arts & Culture editor, Steffen Silvis, and told him I wanted to write about music. He ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Some people love to be the center of attention. Danny Seim, best known as drummer and co-songwriter for the awesome, experimental-pop triple-threat Menomena, is not one of those people. He’s bee ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Mike Dixon doesn’t cater to just your average nerd. He may be a high-school accounting and introductory computer teacher in nearby Olympia, Wash., but the bespectacled 29-year-old spends just as ... More

Here Comes Your Fan I believe it was the Boss who so eloquently sung the praises of “human touch” back in the ’90s. And though husband-and-wife duo Viva Voce—whose discography includes such mushil ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Christian rock is probably the furthest thing from most kids’ minds when considering ways to rebel. But Greg Glover—host of KRNK’s Sunday night program, the Bottom Forty, and founder ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Tom Jones turns 68 years old this Saturday. Yet, last Thursday at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, women of all ages threw panties at him, squealed with twitterpation and smiled at his every word. E ... More

Here Comes Your Fan At the end of the South Park episode where the Cure’s Robert Smith defeats a giant, monstrous Barbra Streisand—she plays “Mecha-Streisand” to his “Smithra” in a bat ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Do-goodery hits us at different times. For 16-year-old Lincoln High student Alden Harris-McCoy, the charitable urge struck when he realized profits from his Curbside Market—a food cart he runs d ... More

Here Comes Your Fan I have a lot of faith in Colin Meloy. The Decemberists frontman is capable of many wondrous things: writing a pop song that casually employs the word “balustrade,” for one; convincingly de ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Last Monday night, I found myself wandering under the Fremont Bridge’s industrial east side. The block I was pacing—between North Albina Avenue and Tillamook Street, just off the MAX&rsquo ... More

Music “I just want to talk less and less,” says Holcombe Waller. “It’s like, conversations walk by and I have all these ideas of things to say, and I just sit there and let them go because I’m l ... More

Music What do sailors and Southern gothic folk bands have in common? According to the Builders and the Butchers’ singer-guitarist, Ryan Sollee, ... More

Music [RAW CHORAL POP] It’s not too often that an album sinks its teeth into a listener within the first five seconds. AgesandAges’ debut, Alright ... More

Music   ... More

Music   They don’t look like revivalists of the groove-heavy sound of vintage Ethiopian funk and soul. To the outside observer ... More

Music [THE OL’ SLOW ’N’ SAD] Barry Brusseau is a man with many gifts: a clear, low-register voice that reminds of Smog’s Bill Callahan; dexterous hands that convey soul and patience ... More

Music Northwest hip-hop wasn’t born when Oldominion formed in 1999. But the expansive Portland/Seattle crew united the local underground rap scene for the first time, and in the band’s 12-year r ... More

Music [PRODUCER POP] Talkdemonic. Blind Pilot. Horse Feathers. World’s Greatest Ghosts. If you peruse the liner notes of many of the best indie rock and folk albums released in Portland over the past ... More

Music Born: 1946 in Chapel Hill, N.C.Sounds like: Steve Martin playing a banjo concert at a Delaware prep school. For fans of: Pete Seeger, Bob Seger, Richard Thompson, Kate McGarrigle, Rufus and Martha Wai ... More

Music [RIFFS OF LIFE] If anyone ever wanted to do an indie-rock remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, Sweet Apple singer John Petkovic has a few casting suggestions: himself as George Bailey and his bandma ... More

Music Stories [SINGER-SONGWRITER] William Helfrich woke up one morning a few years ago and realized he was a grown-up. It was something none of his previous life experiences—not going to college, not holding ... More

Music Stories Chevelle Wiseman had never played bass when she agreed to be the bassist for Guantanamo Baywatch, a handicap she overcame by... ... More

Music Stories Formed: 2002 in San Francisco. Sounds like: A Saturday Night Fever-style dance floor made of melting chocolate.  For fans of: Boards of Canada’s Geogaddi, anything on the Ghost Box label, Luk ... More

Music Stories [HOMEMADE POP] Julie Vitells grew up in what she calls “a pop-culture vacuum.” With hippie parents and a natural proclivity toward “old-timey stuff,” the young musician—who spent her ear ... More

Music Stories Born: Oct. 26, 1986, on an Army base in West Germany. Sounds like: A thugged-out West Coast version of Kid Cudi who wants to go clubbin’ with 50 Cent but ends up taking a bunch of ’shrooms an ... More

Music Stories For most of those who know his music, French songwriter Yann Tiersen will forever be associated with whimsical tunes played with a jaunty joie de vivre on an accordion. But ask Devin Gallagher, ... More

Music Stories When the St. Johns Bizarre began six years ago, it was a low-profile street fair with crafts, beer and bands. Today it’s a slightly higher-profile street fair with more crafts, more beer and rea ... More

Music Stories Formed: 1994 in San Francisco.  Sounds like: A series of intense couple fights that always end in cuddling. For fans of: Sonic Youth, Electric Light Orchestra, the Dandy Warhols, Letters to Cle ... More

Music Stories Last year was a good one for the sax. From the commercial airwaves (Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”) to the indie blogosphere (Destroyer’s Kaputt, Tune- ... More

Music Stories [UNCHAINED MELODIES] The idolization of handsome young male musicians is not the sole province of Beatlemania, Tiger Beat magazine or the Jonas family. Lockett Pundt, Lotus Plaza’s frontman and a ... More

Night Avenger Strip clubs are like raindrops in Portland: They're everywhere. And like the rain, stripculture is seemingly indiscriminate, catering to a largely mixed (and mixed-gender) crowd. For anyone to willing ... More

Night Avenger BC's American Saloon Outlaws, Legends and Lovers, aug. 17"I like rocking with the boot-scooting boogie." That's Tabbitha-but call her Tabotage. Loose black tank top, hair whimsically shorn, she's the ... More

Night Avenger I can't believe it myself. It's as bad as we all think. Inside the newly revamped sports bar downtown called The City, I'm waiting to audition alongside about 400 other idiots/idolaters for MTV's Real ... More

Night Avenger Some think American youth never associate with their elders. These people have never visited Sunset Bingo.Out on Western Avenue, just past the Dolphin II Gentleman's Club and Fantasy Video, stands a b ... More

Night Avenger Koji Okuno is one of a truly rare breed: club owners who are themselves jazz fans, and who want to see the music presented in the best setting possible. That's why the owner of local Japanese restaura ... More

Night Avenger In a city where stripping for a living is considered less offensive than working for Starbucks, the Mardi Gras tradition of trading a glimpse of one's naughty bits for beads seems downright quaint. To ... More

Night Avenger Last Friday night Lisa Wells stood in the front of more than 60 people and read them an acerbic email her best friend, Esther Barnum Alman, wrote her last year, after the 25-year-old woman found out s ... More

Night Avenger At the ripe old age of 25, it has already become apparent that I can't party like I used to. My college years of binge drinking and getting off virtually scot-free are gone. The all-day hangover has a ... More

Night Avenger People like their hideouts to seem immutable--as if a freak landslide sealed a chamber off from the busy world in 1962 and, by chance or fate, they cleared away the rocky rubble to claim this forgotte ... More

Night Avenger Once the holiday hangover wears off, January boasts nothing but bills, bank statements and the chilly suspicion that your heat is about to be turned off. Only one street in Portland can assuage such w ... More

RIFF CITY When Foureveryoung—the musical project of Loch Lomond's Ritchie Young and his three younger brothers—first booked a show at Mississippi Studios, owner Jim Brunberg said, "I'm not gonna che ... More

RIFF CITY Every year, Austin, Tex., is host to literally thousands of bands during the giant annual press conference and music fest that is South by Southwest (SXSW). This year (like most), a good assload of th ... More

RIFF CITY On "Spitting Venom," perhaps the awesomest track on Modest Mouse's latest, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Isaac Brock sings, "We've got a knack for fucked-up history." You can say that again, ... More

RIFF CITY When Riot Cop's Dominic Drumgo saw the booklet for Choke On It—a vinyl compilation of Portland punk that features his band—he treated the record just as he used to treat those by the famou ... More

RIFF CITY In the year since Marius Libman— the finely dressed, massively bearded gentleman behind electronic dance project Copy—released his stellar debut LP, Mobius Beard, and took WW's Best New Ba ... More

RIFF CITY In the land of what he calls "hyper-expressive" songwriters, Michael Rockstar is an odd bird: a musical comedian. What's more: He's actually pretty funny. It's not necessarily his Adam Sandler-esque f ... More

RIFF CITY According to its online bio, local record label Love Harder "started out as a slogan after the demise of the American Electoral System." But, over beers at the label's two-year anniversary show this p ... More

RIFF CITY Jim Fairchild—best known for playing guitar in now-defunct Modesto, Calif.,-based blip-pop band Grandaddy—lived in Portland for only seven months. But during that short time in 2005, Fairc ... More

RIFF CITY Slabtown is more than a bar. The name not only denotes a region—Industrial Northwest Portland—it embodies a history: In the 1880s, rich folks used "Slabtown" to refer derogatorily to worki ... More

RIFF CITY "Guacamole!" exclaim two women at a local Starbucks. They're not trying to place a special order; local blues legend Sonny Hess and award-winning bass player Lisa Mann (who was greeted by Hess with a ... More

Sonic Reducer Black Angel Bitter Suite (self-released) Before their long-running weekly gig at Dante's came to an end, Portlanders with a taste for hot-buttered soul could sate themselves regularly with Black ... More

Sonic Reducer Amon Tobin Out From Out Where (Ninja Tune) Ninja Tune posterchild Amon Tobin delivers yet another collection of complex, confounding and endlessly creative cuts. This time, he inches closer to t ... More

Sonic Reducer The Badger King The Tongue and Tooth EP (States Rights) Sometimes seeing the Badger King live feels more like being at a karaoke bar than a rock show. It's hard to pin down what, if anything, "pr ... More

Sonic Reducer Hot Hot Heat Make Up the Breakdown (Sub Pop) Victoria, B.C., is known as a pretty traditional town, a geographically and chronologically unlikely outpost of tea-'n'-crumpet Edwardian Englishness ... More

Sonic Reducer Ani DiFranco So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter (Righteous Babe) The album, recorded in "some club in Nantes, France, and that bar in Boise, Idaho, and a few places in between," is a career-spann ... More

Sonic Reducer COCO The COCO Sound (K) COCO's analog drum-and-bass picks up where Dub Narcotic Sound System starts to get boring (i.e., after the first two minutes of any DNSS song) and offers some heady respi ... More

Sonic Reducer American Analog Set Updates EP (Tiger Style) This EP is a collection of two American Analog Set rarities remixed by the band itself, and two remixes each by Her Space Holiday and Styrofoam. HSH pr ... More

Sonic Reducer Antiseen Screamin' Bloody Live (TKO Records) On the night of June 6, 2001, I was torn. Hickoid behemoths Antiseen were set to take the stage at the Ash Street while Dead Moon was over at Satyricon, ... More

Sonic Reducer Abe Schwartz The Klezmer King (Columbia/Legacy) Les Yeux Noirs Balamouk (World Village) Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars Brotherhood of Brass (Piranha)Abe Schwartz stepped off the boat in ... More

Sonic Reducer The Bella Fayes The Truth in a Beautiful Lie (Secret Decoder)Bella Fayes guitarist-singer Lael Alderman has endured some bruising encounters with the beast that dwells within the music industry. ... More

Top 5 Santigold (7:10 pm Friday, Sasquatch stage) Well, we’re not above a little stargazing. The Helio Sequence (6:20 pm Saturday, Bigfoot stage) It has been a long time, and we hear great things about the f ... More

Top 5 The Shawshank RedemptionThis is the best prison movie ever made. Doesn’t seem like something Stephen King would write, but I loved the short story too. Cool Hand LukeStrange that my two favorite mov ... More

Top 5 Teahouses [WIN: PORTLAND]Portland has the best teahouse in the world: the Tao of Tea. We don’t have anything like that in Austin yet. We have great coffee shops, but to really be a tea connoisse ... More

Top 5 Portland Cello Project, Homage LPThe local pop-classical outfit tackles such timeless classics as Kanye and Jay-Z’s “That’s My Bitch” and 50 Cent’s “Lollipop.” Starfucker, Heaven’s You ... More

Top 5 Buddy HollyHe inspired generations of musical nerds from Elvis Costello to Kanye, not to mention most of the current-day NBA. You know you’ve arrived when Weezer writes a song about you. Ray ... More

Top 5 Vancouver, B.C.Bass music is huge. The audiences are smart. Activism/politics in art aren’t considered taboo like in the states.Yogyakarta, IndonesiaAn autonomous city-state sultanate, where the sul ... More

Top 5 Anya’s Ghost (First Second)A great coming-of-age tale with bonus spookiness and excitement. Sleeper (Wildstorm)An early work by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips who later took the comics world by storm ... More

Top 5 Soul’d Out Music Festival, April 12-25We’re excited about: Dr. Lonnie Smith, who absolutely killed last year’s fest; the mighty Maze; French electro-geniuses Justice.Waterfront Blues Festival, J ... More

Top 5 C.J. WatsonHe’s an ex-Warrior, and when I say “Watson,” I’m imitating Arsenio Hall introducing Mr. Randy Watson in Coming to America. Derrick RoseBecause he subs in for C.J. Watson sometime ... More

Top 5 “Salty Dog Blues,” Morris BrothersGoogle “salty dog” while keeping in mind that this song is from the late ’30s. There is something just so filthy about the term.“Rye Whiskey,” Tex Ritte ... More