Album Reviews [MOOD PIECES] There’s no way around it: Swim, the fourth album by local jazz institution Blue Cranes, is as heady and dark as anything the group has done in its six years together. The big cha ... More

Album Reviews [PUNK METAL] As the Minutemen’s Mike Watt once observed, a good song title is worth a thousand lyrics. With Gaytheist, that advice is well-heeded: Lest anyone feel fatigued by the bulldozing pun ... More

Album Reviews [HEARTBROKEN ROCK] Don’t be fooled by the picture on the cover of Scout Niblett’s new album, a photo-booth shot of a couple in full make-out mode. The heart of It’s Up to Emma is not a rom ... More

Album Reviews [POP OPERA] Concept albums demand some suspension of disbelief and a little imagination from the listener. When the story being related is in the realm of epic fantasy, as is the case with Morni ... More

Album Reviews [PSYCH-PUNK] One does not simply record Sun Angle. Feeding psychedelic guitars and pan-global rhythms through punk tempos delivered with free-jazz abandon, the band—a collaboration between thr ... More

Album Reviews [INSTRUMENTAL MINIMALISM] Ambient music is a dangerous proposition for even the most studied of musicians. The combination of elongated drones, stillness and washes of synth has to be measured p ... More

Album Reviews [HIP-HOP] Portland MC Serge Severe has always had an appreciation for the “golden age” of hip-hop. He released a tape of himself rapping over DJ Premier beats. He refers to  himself as ... More

Album Reviews [REHEATED ROCK] Every review of the eponymous EP recently released by Aina Haina seems obligated to first mention the day job of Dylan Magierek—producer, engineer and co-founder of globally reno ... More

Album Reviews [CABBIE TUNES] Portland’s Old Light has been on one hell of a weird trajectory. The project started as a series of autoharp-intensive recordings frontman Garth Klippert played for passengers i ... More

Album Reviews [FOREIGNERS] To argue the merits of teenage bands means punting lyrics from the outset. Rare are the artists as young men who articulate their passions with any degree of complexity or perspecti ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Four years ago, I sat, a fresh-faced prospective intern, across from WW’s notoriously cantankerous assistant Arts & Culture editor, Steffen Silvis, and told him I wanted to write about music. He ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Some people love to be the center of attention. Danny Seim, best known as drummer and co-songwriter for the awesome, experimental-pop triple-threat Menomena, is not one of those people. He’s bee ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Mike Dixon doesn’t cater to just your average nerd. He may be a high-school accounting and introductory computer teacher in nearby Olympia, Wash., but the bespectacled 29-year-old spends just as ... More

Here Comes Your Fan I believe it was the Boss who so eloquently sung the praises of “human touch” back in the ’90s. And though husband-and-wife duo Viva Voce—whose discography includes such mushil ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Christian rock is probably the furthest thing from most kids’ minds when considering ways to rebel. But Greg Glover—host of KRNK’s Sunday night program, the Bottom Forty, and founder ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Tom Jones turns 68 years old this Saturday. Yet, last Thursday at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, women of all ages threw panties at him, squealed with twitterpation and smiled at his every word. E ... More

Here Comes Your Fan At the end of the South Park episode where the Cure’s Robert Smith defeats a giant, monstrous Barbra Streisand—she plays “Mecha-Streisand” to his “Smithra” in a bat ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Do-goodery hits us at different times. For 16-year-old Lincoln High student Alden Harris-McCoy, the charitable urge struck when he realized profits from his Curbside Market—a food cart he runs d ... More

Here Comes Your Fan I have a lot of faith in Colin Meloy. The Decemberists frontman is capable of many wondrous things: writing a pop song that casually employs the word “balustrade,” for one; convincingly de ... More

Here Comes Your Fan Last Monday night, I found myself wandering under the Fremont Bridge’s industrial east side. The block I was pacing—between North Albina Avenue and Tillamook Street, just off the MAX&rsquo ... More

Music “I just want to talk less and less,” says Holcombe Waller. “It’s like, conversations walk by and I have all these ideas of things to say, and I just sit there and let them go because I’m l ... More

Music What do sailors and Southern gothic folk bands have in common? According to the Builders and the Butchers’ singer-guitarist, Ryan Sollee, ... More

Music [RAW CHORAL POP] It’s not too often that an album sinks its teeth into a listener within the first five seconds. AgesandAges’ debut, Alright ... More

Music   ... More

Music   They don’t look like revivalists of the groove-heavy sound of vintage Ethiopian funk and soul. To the outside observer ... More

Music [THE OL’ SLOW ’N’ SAD] Barry Brusseau is a man with many gifts: a clear, low-register voice that reminds of Smog’s Bill Callahan; dexterous hands that convey soul and patience ... More

Music Northwest hip-hop wasn’t born when Oldominion formed in 1999. But the expansive Portland/Seattle crew united the local underground rap scene for the first time, and in the band’s 12-year r ... More

Music [PRODUCER POP] Talkdemonic. Blind Pilot. Horse Feathers. World’s Greatest Ghosts. If you peruse the liner notes of many of the best indie rock and folk albums released in Portland over the past ... More

Music Born: 1946 in Chapel Hill, N.C.Sounds like: Steve Martin playing a banjo concert at a Delaware prep school. For fans of: Pete Seeger, Bob Seger, Richard Thompson, Kate McGarrigle, Rufus and Martha Wai ... More

Music [RIFFS OF LIFE] If anyone ever wanted to do an indie-rock remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, Sweet Apple singer John Petkovic has a few casting suggestions: himself as George Bailey and his bandma ... More

Music Stories Festivals are a drain—not just physically, but mentally too. As if wading through a sea of tweens in feathered headdresses for four days wasn’t exhausting enough, the performance schedule of ... More

Music Stories Formed: In the loo of a pub in Conventry, England, in 1986.  Sounds like: An armada of Space Marines overtaking a battle cruiser full of Chaos Warriors. For fans of: Carcass, Napalm Death, Godf ... More

Music Stories  Omara Moctar has spent his life on the run. In 1990, at age 10, the Saharan-born guitarist, who grew up in an encampment of nomadic Tuaregs in northern Niger, escaped to Algeria wit ... More

Music Stories They say anyone who remembers the ’60s wasn’t there. Tell it to Travis Neel. For the last six months, the 29-year-old Portland State University graduate student has been studying the Gratefu ... More

Music Stories The accordion has 233 buttons, 41 keys and 8,888 chords. George Rozwick won’t claim he knows all the chords off the top of his head. Pretty much everything else, though? He’s got it. Of cour ... More

Music Stories Six years ago, the last band anyone would’ve pegged to make it big outside of Portland might have been Wampire. First of all, there’s that name. An inside joke goofing on the German pronunciat ... More

Music Stories The founder of SoHiTek Records, 30-year-old Erik Carlson, lives the quintessential Portland dream. Aside from owning and operating his own homegrown record label, he also curates the SoHiTek visua ... More

Music Stories Born: In Savannah, Ga., in 1975. Sounds like: Listening to the coolest dude at the party shoot the shit as the DJ spins ’70s soul, ’80s boogie funk and the occasional modern electro-pop recor ... More

Music Stories Walter Salas-Humara and Charlie Salas-Humara have nothing in common.  Well, except for the last name, of course. And Charlie’s dad, who happens to be Walter’s brother. In musical terms, ... More

Music Stories [TUVAN THROAT SINGING] One of the world’s best Tuvan throat singers lives in Portland. His name is Enrique Ugalde—though before explaining who he is, maybe it’s best to explain exactly what ... More

Night Avenger Strip clubs are like raindrops in Portland: They're everywhere. And like the rain, stripculture is seemingly indiscriminate, catering to a largely mixed (and mixed-gender) crowd. For anyone to willing ... More

Night Avenger BC's American Saloon Outlaws, Legends and Lovers, aug. 17"I like rocking with the boot-scooting boogie." That's Tabbitha-but call her Tabotage. Loose black tank top, hair whimsically shorn, she's the ... More

Night Avenger I can't believe it myself. It's as bad as we all think. Inside the newly revamped sports bar downtown called The City, I'm waiting to audition alongside about 400 other idiots/idolaters for MTV's Real ... More

Night Avenger Some think American youth never associate with their elders. These people have never visited Sunset Bingo.Out on Western Avenue, just past the Dolphin II Gentleman's Club and Fantasy Video, stands a b ... More

Night Avenger Koji Okuno is one of a truly rare breed: club owners who are themselves jazz fans, and who want to see the music presented in the best setting possible. That's why the owner of local Japanese restaura ... More

Night Avenger In a city where stripping for a living is considered less offensive than working for Starbucks, the Mardi Gras tradition of trading a glimpse of one's naughty bits for beads seems downright quaint. To ... More

Night Avenger Last Friday night Lisa Wells stood in the front of more than 60 people and read them an acerbic email her best friend, Esther Barnum Alman, wrote her last year, after the 25-year-old woman found out s ... More

Night Avenger At the ripe old age of 25, it has already become apparent that I can't party like I used to. My college years of binge drinking and getting off virtually scot-free are gone. The all-day hangover has a ... More

Night Avenger People like their hideouts to seem immutable--as if a freak landslide sealed a chamber off from the busy world in 1962 and, by chance or fate, they cleared away the rocky rubble to claim this forgotte ... More

Night Avenger Once the holiday hangover wears off, January boasts nothing but bills, bank statements and the chilly suspicion that your heat is about to be turned off. Only one street in Portland can assuage such w ... More

RIFF CITY When Foureveryoung—the musical project of Loch Lomond's Ritchie Young and his three younger brothers—first booked a show at Mississippi Studios, owner Jim Brunberg said, "I'm not gonna che ... More

RIFF CITY Every year, Austin, Tex., is host to literally thousands of bands during the giant annual press conference and music fest that is South by Southwest (SXSW). This year (like most), a good assload of th ... More

RIFF CITY On "Spitting Venom," perhaps the awesomest track on Modest Mouse's latest, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Isaac Brock sings, "We've got a knack for fucked-up history." You can say that again, ... More

RIFF CITY When Riot Cop's Dominic Drumgo saw the booklet for Choke On It—a vinyl compilation of Portland punk that features his band—he treated the record just as he used to treat those by the famou ... More

RIFF CITY In the year since Marius Libman— the finely dressed, massively bearded gentleman behind electronic dance project Copy—released his stellar debut LP, Mobius Beard, and took WW's Best New Ba ... More

RIFF CITY In the land of what he calls "hyper-expressive" songwriters, Michael Rockstar is an odd bird: a musical comedian. What's more: He's actually pretty funny. It's not necessarily his Adam Sandler-esque f ... More

RIFF CITY According to its online bio, local record label Love Harder "started out as a slogan after the demise of the American Electoral System." But, over beers at the label's two-year anniversary show this p ... More

RIFF CITY Jim Fairchild—best known for playing guitar in now-defunct Modesto, Calif.,-based blip-pop band Grandaddy—lived in Portland for only seven months. But during that short time in 2005, Fairc ... More

RIFF CITY Slabtown is more than a bar. The name not only denotes a region—Industrial Northwest Portland—it embodies a history: In the 1880s, rich folks used "Slabtown" to refer derogatorily to worki ... More

RIFF CITY "Guacamole!" exclaim two women at a local Starbucks. They're not trying to place a special order; local blues legend Sonny Hess and award-winning bass player Lisa Mann (who was greeted by Hess with a ... More

Sonic Reducer Black Angel Bitter Suite (self-released) Before their long-running weekly gig at Dante's came to an end, Portlanders with a taste for hot-buttered soul could sate themselves regularly with Black ... More

Sonic Reducer Amon Tobin Out From Out Where (Ninja Tune) Ninja Tune posterchild Amon Tobin delivers yet another collection of complex, confounding and endlessly creative cuts. This time, he inches closer to t ... More

Sonic Reducer The Badger King The Tongue and Tooth EP (States Rights) Sometimes seeing the Badger King live feels more like being at a karaoke bar than a rock show. It's hard to pin down what, if anything, "pr ... More

Sonic Reducer Hot Hot Heat Make Up the Breakdown (Sub Pop) Victoria, B.C., is known as a pretty traditional town, a geographically and chronologically unlikely outpost of tea-'n'-crumpet Edwardian Englishness ... More

Sonic Reducer Ani DiFranco So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter (Righteous Babe) The album, recorded in "some club in Nantes, France, and that bar in Boise, Idaho, and a few places in between," is a career-spann ... More

Sonic Reducer COCO The COCO Sound (K) COCO's analog drum-and-bass picks up where Dub Narcotic Sound System starts to get boring (i.e., after the first two minutes of any DNSS song) and offers some heady respi ... More

Sonic Reducer American Analog Set Updates EP (Tiger Style) This EP is a collection of two American Analog Set rarities remixed by the band itself, and two remixes each by Her Space Holiday and Styrofoam. HSH pr ... More

Sonic Reducer Antiseen Screamin' Bloody Live (TKO Records) On the night of June 6, 2001, I was torn. Hickoid behemoths Antiseen were set to take the stage at the Ash Street while Dead Moon was over at Satyricon, ... More

Sonic Reducer Abe Schwartz The Klezmer King (Columbia/Legacy) Les Yeux Noirs Balamouk (World Village) Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars Brotherhood of Brass (Piranha)Abe Schwartz stepped off the boat in ... More

Sonic Reducer The Bella Fayes The Truth in a Beautiful Lie (Secret Decoder)Bella Fayes guitarist-singer Lael Alderman has endured some bruising encounters with the beast that dwells within the music industry. ... More

Top 5 Goudy Old Style looks pretty slick as an album font.Outdated? Psssh. Typography from 1915 is totally in right now. “Little Lion Man” proves radio edits don’t discourage inappropriate off-air la ... More

Top 5 “The Cuckoo,” Clarence AshleyThis is one of those grand old songs from across the seas that is timeless and transcends the limits of our current mode of musical thought.“See That My Grave is ... More

Top 5 ON FRIENDSHIP Dalai Lama: “Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives.” Anthony Kiedis: “And my friend’s named Bob. Like the de ... More

Top 5 Gazooka Bazooka Apparently, someone or something by that name played the Foggy Notion in March. That’s all we know, but c’mon: You’re just happy to live in a city where something called “ ... More

Top 5 “Cinnamon Girl,” Musicology, 2004 Only Prince has the balls to steal the title of one of Neil Young’s signature songs. Other than the name, the standout track from his “comeback” album ... More

Top 5 Cheater Slicks (April 12)Running on, in their words, “100 percent negative energy” since 1996, the three-man Ohio noise machine makes howling, despondent rock ’n’ roll that, for all its co ... More

Top 5  Drunk Kid Waiting for the Late-Night Bus
He started his set by staggering into the street, where he
 came nail-bitingly close to getting hit by a car. Narrowly surviving
the trip to the other side ... More

Top 5 Bands—who needs ’em!? Pssh, come on! You’ll hear bands without even trying, man. Anyway, that’s not really why you are here, is it? Focus on “networking,” kissing ass, getting signed ... More

Top 5 Soundwalk (Saturday, March 9, at Mount Tabor Park, 1 pm) Artist and composer Susan Alexjander leads a structured listening session for curious souls to drink in the raw sounds of nature. The La ... More

Top 5 “Even if it’s jazz or the quiet storm/ I hook a beat up, convert it into hip-hop form.” —“I Ain’t No Joke” (Paid in Full, 1987) “Thinkin’ of a master plan/ ’Cause ain’t nothin� ... More