Music Old-school Portland rockers have often complained to me that the current PDX music scene is too polished, too acoustic and too twee. They miss rock and roll. I get that. Portland could fill an entire ark of folk-pop sub-genres, and even with the thriving local metal scene, good ol' fashion riffage can be tough to find.
Old Growth sounds more like the Portland of 15 years ago than the Portland o...   More

Music














Howabout some ten-word reviews, huh? Let's keep it simple! 

Wild Flag, "Romance" (Okay, this is extra-old, but we missed it)Clock-punching superstars go on a field trip. Super fun! 




Nurses, "Fever Dreams"Creepy dispatch from Portland: Minstrel-rave ...   More

Books Like other iconic black-and-white comics characters with cult followings—Cerebus, Concrete, Zippy the Pin-head—Too Much Coffee Man is instantly identifiable but incredibly hard to define. In fac   More

Album Reviews [WEIRD AMERICANA] Blitzen Trapper tends to write checks, in its opening songs, that its albums don’t care to cash. That was the case with the proggy opener to last year’s Destroyer of the Void,    More

Top 5 The Thermals, “Power Doesn’t Run on Nothing” I wish Hutch Harris had been my American history teacher. “Our power doesn’t run on nothing,” he sings. “It runs on blood/ And blood is eas   More

Cover Story “See everybody’s striving for that same shit/ To get paid and make it/ And I’ll be honest, I’m trying to become famous” —“Ego” (2005) Ben Haggerty has lost his train of thought. Mom   More

Music Stories There’s a reason sex comes first in the trio of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Doin’ it has always been the primary thematic interest of pop music, from Jerry Lee Lewis’ shakin’ to Tre   More

Album Reviews [FUZZ BOMBS] As its mid-career name change might imply, Big Black Cloud (formerly “Here Comes a Big Black Cloud!”) isn’t the same band it was while soundtracking summer house shows with its c   More

Album Reviews [SLICK SYNTH-POP] O come, all ye corporate America heatseekers, I have the perfect 30-second snippet for your next iPad/Target/Electric car ad. “Lift Me Up,” the opening track from Vanimal’s    More

Brew Views I often wonder whether The Goonies is held in as high esteem elsewhere as it is in the Northwest. For most Oregon natives now on the cusp of their 30s, the 1985 film was a rite of passage—not onl   More