Music I recently lugged a stack of records to a new friend’s house for an intimate listening party, one of those let’s-get-to-know-each-other-better-through-music things that happens far too infrequently in this parched and disconcertingly friendless stretch of adulthood I find myself limping through. I brought a carefully curated selection bearing this important message: "I contain multitudes and y...   More

Album Reviews [SHOEGAZE DAZE] Don’t let the title of Anne’s debut album fool you—this Portland quartet’s sad-sack shoegazing is about as punk as Robert Smith’s mansion. But the bait-and-switch perpetrat   More

Music One of the cool things about writing about music in a part-time capacity is that I don’t have to write about music in a full-time capacity. This means I have time to explore my other interests, which are, in descending order of importance: whiskey. But because music cannot claim me as its full-time slave, and since I cast such a wide net into the teeming night of arts and culture, amazing bands ...   More

Music These are my five favorite songs of all time this week. You can listen to all of them on the internet, because the internet is magic. Also: The Ax, King Louie and Youthbitch are all playing on Saturday, October 29. But not together. Good luck with that!



Honduran, “Live Fast, Die You” Honduran’s self-titled 7-inch got a ridiculously mean re...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories “Film is over,” claimed Jean-Luc Godard in a recent interview with The Guardian. “It’s sad nobody is really exploring it.” On its surface, this seems an utterly daft overstatement. If his    More

Music We love Portland. But sometimes you just have to get out of town, so this week we sent Chris Stamm to Seattle (okay, Chris Stamm lives in Seattle, but he spends an awful lot of his weekends in Portland) to witness the City Arts Fest (Helio Sequence played a fucking laser light show!) and Robert Ham to Seattle to see Portishead. Here's the Chris Stamm portion of our coverage. -Ed.

WEDNESDAY,...   More

Music This Occupy Wall Street jazz, or the inchoate and proudly ramshackle version of it I witnessed in Seattle on Saturday, has triggered a little anarcho-punk renaissance in my house. What I saw on the street—the purity of the anger, the volume of the despair—reminded me of my own political education, which temporarily branded me with ink-stained fingers and permanently scarred me with serious dou...   More

Music It was a dark and stormy night. Not so much stormy as drizzly, come to think of it. But it was dark. Definitely dark. Not surprising, considering it was nighttime, but still: dark and kinda damp! Date: October 8, 2011.
Place: El Corazon, Seattle’s version of Portland’s dearly departed Satyricon. Do you miss Satyricon’s inconvenient pole and pillar placement? Its seven band bills? The w...   More

Music Upper Extremities #10: Explosion At The Know

I’ll be brief: There is an amazing show happening at The Know tonigt. The four bands playing—Amarok, Protestant, Raw Nerves and Squalora—all have new records out. I review them below. Spoiler alert: I love them all. This is a can’t-miss affair, folks. Be there. Buy these records while you’re at it. I’d give you a money back guara...   More

Music Attempting to find an untrampled path into the center of the ever-expanding celebration of Nevermind’s 20th anniversary, I perused my terribly old-seeming record collection in search of a better album released in 1991, a record against which Nevermind would seem limp and wan, something to use as a shield in my contrarian battle against Nirvana nostalgia. I found two albums from that year that ...   More