Music It's good to have M. Ward back. After years galavanting with Hollywood types and teaming up with other Monsters of Folk, the Portland songwriter has returned to that thing he does best: Writing time-displaced pop songs with plenty of reverb on the vocals. 
"Primitive Girl" is the first single from his forthcoming disc A Wasteland Companion. That is an excellent album title. The r...   More

Music Stories Because frontman Craig Finn’s voice is the most easily identified part of his band the Hold Steady’s sound, one might assume Finn’s new solo debut, Clear Heart Full Eyes, would sound like    More

Music Stories [COUNTRY] James Low has his proverbial shit together. After years without inspiration—his 2009 The Blackguard’s Waltz EP was the first release since what Low calls an “awful” 2004 live alb   More

Album Reviews [JAZZ] If the kids pried jazz from the old institutions that keep the music on life support and reinvented it for themselves—could this music be cool again? And what would a generation of new    More

Bar Reviews There are three magic words printed in all-caps on a sidewalk sign for The High Dive (1406 SE 12th Ave., 384-2285) that should, in time, make it a favorite neighborhood watering hole: CART FOOD WE   More

Headout Shuffleboard makes for strange bedfellows. Tonight my teammate—drawn at random—is Don, a white-haired old-timer with a sunny disposition helped by a decent Pabst buzz. As this is my first sh   More

Music These days, it's more surprising to hear of someone actually paying for an album than it is to hear about an artist giving their work away for free. This shouldn't diminish the amount of work it takes for guys like Sapient and Luck-One to bring us their albums free of charge. If you like the music, go see these guys live or buy another album. Local music—and local hip-hop in particular—deserve...   More

News Tim Duncan looks sad here because he's not playing tonight. I'm sad about it, too. One of my last chances to see one of the all-time greats and he's not in the building? That's a bit of a bummer. Though, honestly, I think the Spurs have a better chance of beating the Blazers from their bench than with a coupla tuckered-out veterans. [UPDATE: I was really, really wrong about this and clearly know n...   More

Music I guess I missed the part of Yacht's career where they went from party-starters who could craft a catchy hook to to legitimate songwriters whose songs could allow for a Beatles-esque string section and really lovely sentiments. This new video—which, appropriately, debuted on the L.A. Times' blog yesterday—starts out looking all culty, but quickly transitions into a hazy cavalcade of simple ple...   More

Music Tu Fawning started out weird, and if "Bones," the new track leaked today over at RCRD LBL (whatever that is) is any indication, the Tu Fawning disc dropping on May 15 is gonna be a real weird one. The ambitious track—anything that runs over seven minutes long is usually dubbed ambitious, but for this occasion I mean musically, not just length-wise—takes three of those minutes before Tu Fawning...   More