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