Portland – Everybody loves an album with a back-story; Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago emerging from Justin Vernon’s three months of post-breakup solitude in a snow-bound Wisconsin cabin, and John Coltrane, kicked out of Miles Davis’ group as a junkie, experiencing a life saving spiritual awakening and setting it to tape in the form of A Love
An Interview With Chris Scott of Bearcubbin’!

Portland – Bearcubbin’! were picked as having one of the worst band names at SXSW, but don’t be deterred; this Portland trio plays some of the best instrumental math rock out there. Their latest LP, Girls With Fun Haircuts, is a big ‘ol chunk of pure unbridled fun. I like to imagine it’s what the Kool-Aid
Album Review: Peter Matthew Bauer – Liberation!

Portland – Let’s get the formalities out of the way: Peter Matthew Bauer played bass for The Walkmen. The indie rock stalwarts who, after thirteen years and seven studio albums, are now on “extreme hiatus” as Bauer phrases it. By all accounts the non-breakup was an amicable one, and no blood, bad or otherwise, has
White Hex – Gold Nights

Portland –Tara Green and Jimi Kritzler are an Australian duo who, under the moniker White Hex, have been making sleek, cold music that seems at odds with the bright-sunshine-and-blue-water image of their home country. It’s a contrast they’re fully aware of; labeling themselves, tongue planted firmly in cheek no doubt, as “tropical goth.” If White
The World Is a Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – Live

Portland – Do you remember high school? Do you remember driving around the suburbs in your parents’ car with a cracked Taking Back Sunday or Bright Eyes jewel case baking in the sun on the dash? You were bursting with that new found feeling of being so sad it made you happy or so happy
Lee Bains III And The Glory Fires At Mississippi Studios

Portland – Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires are getting acclaim for their liberal take on good ol’ Southern rock. Their second album Dereconstructed, released this past May on Sub Pop, is an expression of Lee Bain’s experiences as a born and raised Southerner who both loves the place he’s from and hates the ugly
Dub Thompson’s Debut – 9 Songs

Portland – Dub Thompson seems to be a band that does what it wants. Members Matt Pulos (guitar and vocals) and Evan Laffer (drums) are two nineteen year old dudes who met in their Agoura Hills high school gym class, bonded over a love of Can and Talking Heads (because we all listened to Can
Eagulls at Doug Fir Lounge

Portland – Justified or not, Northern England has a reputation for heavy skies and stark industrial scenes. “Tramlines and slagheaps, pieces of machinery,” W.H. Auden once penned cheerily, describing his native region. As the saying goes in Southern England, “it’s grim up North.” Those supposedly gloomy climes above the Watford Gap have given rise to more than
Album Review: Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animals
Portland – Last March Parquet Courts cheekily posted a list on their blog that catalogued the myriad references to them as “slackers” in the press. Fifty-two entries in all, the quotes range from endearing (“the sort of bed-headed slackers you’d meet at a 90’s college party”) to paradoxical (“Brown and Savage might be slackers by