Music WW awards the bands of Slabtown’s third annual Bender Festival.
by CASEY JARMAN, ZACH KLASSEN & MICHAEL MANNHEIMER

This year’s Bender—an annual festival of garage rock, punk and lo-fi sounds at Northwest Portland pinball bar Slabtown—isn’t packed to the brim with big names. But it is packed with carefully curated, solid-to-excellent ba...   More

Music Emancipator Safe In The Steep Cliffs
(1320)

[ELECTRORGANIC] If you turned on the radio in 1939 and heard the Ink Spots’ “If I Didn’t Care,” you’d be able to easily identify crooning voices, a softly strummed acoustic guitar and a touch of piano. Turn the radio on today and playing “name that sound” is a much tougher chore. O...   More

Music

Kava, for general anxiety and insomnia. This stuff works on the same receptors as classical benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, etc.) but is more anxiolytic than hypnotic in effect, so you won't wake up with your face on the floor wondering what the hell you did the day before. And the best part is, you can pick this stuff up at virtually any health food store in America.

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Music We asked the folks behind Rontoms’ ongoing Sunday series (Joe Bowden, Hannah Carlen, Matt King, Ron Toms) for their favorite gigs thus far.Red Fang, Black Elk, Black Eyes and Neckties
(2/1/09) One of the heaviest shows at Rontoms got significantly heavier as Tom Glose of Black Elk puked on the stage, the bass cabinet, the microphone….Dirty Mittens & Church ...   More

Music We've all reacted to the Haiti catastrophe—and people like Pat Robertson's batshit crazy reaction to Haiti—in different ways. Here's how Mississippi Studios and local musicians l...   More

Music Ohioan High Country EP
(Infinite Front)

[FUCKED-UP AMERICANA] At the heart of Ohioan’s sound is a conflict between the embrace of tradition and the refusal of it. Ohioan godhead Ryne Warner seems spiritually opposed to releasing a conventional pop album—a point to which High Country’s avant-noise forays attest—but he also writes a mean...   More

Music Favorite George Clinton and Parliament songs.

5. “I’ll Stay,” Parliament
Shows the bluesier side of P-Funk. Love the haunting vibe on this. Plus, it’s sampled by the greatest group of all time, De La Soul.4. “Atomic Dog,” George Clinton
Bow wow wow yippy-yo yippy-yay!3. “Funkin’ For Fun,” Parliament
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Music “Rebel Without a Pause,” Public EnemyThis for me was the song that bridged the era of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” with the pro-black Afrocentricity of the ’90s. PE brought it hard and made no apologies.“Just a Friendly Game of Baseball,” Main SourceMy favorite Main Source track. Large Professor’s analogy...   More

Music This began as an epic idea: We should get all of WW's freelancers to report on their crazy New Year's Eve parties, thus painting a kaleidoscopic picture of the whole Portland nightlife at the end of the decade. But as it happened, only five people signed up for the project. And one of t...   More

Music 5. Here We Go Magic, “Fangela”A tricky little Brian Eno-esque worldly funk-pop number with real inertia from Luke Temple’s new band. It’s groovy but lo-fi, just like us.4. YACHT, “Psychic City (Voodoo City)”What a relief—the cutest dance jam of the year is also one of the best. It makes for great late-night office drinking music.3. The Min...   More