Music Stories Formed: London, 1979. Sounds like: For those age 45 and above: that delirious moment of pop history when unprecedented racial, sexual and intellectual freedoms glimpsed a better world through spi   More

Music Stories Even for a town rife with butterfly collectors eager to net especially rarefied species, Monarques’ fitful approach toward maintaining band loyalty would ordinarily test the patience of even the   More

Music Turns out that this week is extremely late concert review week. My bad. It was worth the wait, though. -Ed.
Impassioned critiques of dubstep invariably come across as either crotchety or insufferable, I know, but a ring of truth resonates around complaints that electronic music dissolves the recognizably organic from its most popular creations. There's something unsettling about a subbi...   More

Album Reviews [SINGER-SONGWRITER] It has been more than four years since Leigh Marble recorded critically acclaimed sophomore album Red Tornado, and during the elongated gestation of latest offering Where the Knive   More

Music Stories Formed: Around Christmas Eve 2005, when Portland musicians Ezra Holbrook and Jenny Conlee-Drizos first shared an admiration for the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York.” KMRIA (Kiss My Royal Ir   More

Music [Sorry for the last-minute nature of this one, but jeez, talk about a good cause. -Ed.]

By now, most folks have heard about the horrific accident that befell New York Night Train's Jonathan Toubin last Friday, when a Radio Cab literally ran over the NYC DJ and honorary Portlander as he lay sleeping inside his Jupiter Hotel room, and a portion of East End's bar sales as well as the entirety ...   More

Music Stories [HOLIDAY PSYCH ROCK] In the 17 years since the Dandy Warhols first recorded their weirdly definitive rendition of “Little Drummer Boy,” the Portland icons—our most continuously successful    More

Music Stories [ROCK] It’s not, to answer the most obvious question, an acronym. When Kelly Halliburton (Pierced Arrows) first asked Bradly (Weaklings, Lucky 13s) in the spring of 1999 to step in as vocalist as hi   More

Music Stories Formed: Around the turn of the millennium, when frontman-to-be Donnie Rife abandoned the Midwest for the promise of Portland. Sounds like: Weezer, should a lovely and uncomplicated girl have approach   More

Music Undeniably talented, remarkably successful and that rare recording artist to match her age with millions of albums sold absent Svengali rumors or meme exploitation, Taylor Swift appears at the tender age of 21 already guaranteed an enduring career never quite of the moment. It's no small testament to the power of the Princess Economy that ticket sales for the ongoing Speak Now tour overwhel...   More