ALVVAYS
The band will be embarking this summer on an extensive world tour.
Antisocialites is out September 8th on Polyvinyl Records (USA), Transgressive Records (UK/EU), Royal Mountain Records (Canada), Inertia Records (Australia) and P-Vine Records (Japan).
JAY SOM
Before a month-and-change ago, Slowdive hadn't released an album in 22 years. So you'd be forgiven for watching the band perform "Sugar For The Pill" and struggling to pin down what era you're in — especially since NPR Music plopped the group in a playfully retro Brooklyn shuffleboard parlor for the occasion.
In the early '90s, Slowdive dressed up shoegaze's hazy drift with jolts of energy and a chiming dream-pop shimmer. The band lasted only three albums before splitting up in 1995, at which point members Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell formed the more countrified Mojave 3. Now, after reuniting in 2014, it's back with a self-titled album that picks up where it left off — but, while it conjures many signifiers of '90s college radio, the band's return album freshens the project up, too, with bright, impeccable songcraft. A patient mid-tempo gem that's as hooky as it is hypnotic, "Sugar For The Pill" is a particular highlight, so it's a joy to watch the reconstituted band trot it out for this Field Recording, filmed at Royal Palms Shuffleboard in Brooklyn.
“’Soubour’ echoes a desert Led Zeppelin, while the revolving, perky ‘Nick’ suggests what a West African La’s might sound like- but it’s presented in revitalized new settings, with grit, urgency and delicacy in abundance” – Q
“Talking Heads funky… growlingly bluesy… contemplative and hypnotic… A triumph” –The Guardian
“’Songhoy Blues’ desert R&B is incredibly rousing and intense…conjuring a freedom and thrilling abandonment in its hypnotic shuffle boogie and punky blues rocks riffs” – Mojo
Once among the most prominent of Mali’s many ethnic groups, the Songhoy now live largely on the margins of the West African nation. Nonetheless, the Songhoy people retain a fierce pride in their history, beliefs, and traditional music. Hailing from the heart of Gao, on the banks of the Niger River, Oumar Touré and Aliou Touré grew up obsessed with hip hop, R&B, and classic rock like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. They found a kindred spirit and musical brother in guitarist Garba Touré (son of Oumar Touré, long term percussionist in Ali Farka Touré’s band). When growing unrest in the north of Mali forced the young men and their families to take refuge in the southern town of Bamako, they decided to turn crisis into opportunity by forming a band. They enlisted drummer Nathanial “Nat” Dembele and baptized their band Songhoy Blues in celebration of their displaced people and culture.
The ambitious young band were soon a fixture on the Bamako live music scene. Prompted by local studio owner, in September 2013 Songhoy Blues reached out to producer/manager Marc-Antoine Moreau (Amadou & Mariam, K’Naan), in town to scout new talent for the extraordinary Africa Express project. An audition followed and Songhoy Blues were invited to record a track with Nick Zinner, acclaimed producer and guitarist in NYC’s one and only Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The song, entitled “Soubour,” proved a highlight of 2013’s critically applauded “AFRICA EXPRESS PRESENTS…MAISON DES JEUNES.”
Songhoy Blues will herald Music In Exile with a series of much anticipated North American live dates – joining Alabama Shakes at NYC’s Beacon Theatre Thursday, March 12th as well as at Chicago’s The Chicago Theatre Saturday, March 14th and Milwaukee’s Riverside Theatre Sunday, March 15th. Additional North American tour dates will be announced soon.
In addition to their increasingly busy live schedule, Songhoy Blues also appear in an eagerly anticipated new film documenting Malian musicians’ fight with the extremist forces that have seen music banned in much of the country. They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music In Exile will have its world premiere at Austin’s South By Southwest Film Festival 2015.
XRAY MEMBERS RSVP HERE FOR FREE ENTRY!!!!!
$5 AT THE DOOR and FREE FOR XRAY.FM MEMBERS!
TICKETS available at the door, Members must RSVP in advance for free entry here: RSVP LINK
This event is 21 and over21+ / $5 at the door / Free for XRAY members
KILL ROCK STARS, XRAY.FM AND HOLOCENE PRESENT: THE FUTURE OF WHAT 100TH EPISODE CELEBRATION: A LIVE TAPING + BENEFIT FOR XRAY.FM
Celebrate Portland’s music community with XRAY FM, Kill Rock Stars and The Future of What. Over the last few years, The Future of What has highlighted the people and organizations that make Portland a music destination. Join us for a live taping of their 100th episode, featuring your favorite local musicians, labels and innovators. Catch XRAY FM DJs spinning between interviews then turn it up for a dance party after the show.
This event is part of the XRAY.FM Fall Membership Drive
Schedule:
7:00 PM - Take Control of Your Business
Wade Metzler (SoundExchange)
Maggie Vail (CASH Music)
Sierra Haager (Public Display PR)
Ben Hubbird (CD Baby, Party Damage Records)
7:35 PM - Rock Camp
Katherine Paul (Black Belt Eagle Scout)
Kristi Balzer (Rock'n'Roll Camp for Girls)
8:00 PM - MusicPortland Movement
Chloe Eudaly Portland City Commissioner
Meara McLoughlin (MusicPortland)
Andre Middleton (Friends of Noise)
Chris Young (Vortex Music Magazine)
DJ Klyph
8:25 PM - Lifelong Musicians
Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney, Filthy Friends)
Peter Buck (R.E.M. , Filthy Friends)
Laura Veirs
Cool Nutz
9:00 PM on - Strange Babes!!
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The Future of What is a podcast and radio program about the music industry. Each week host Portia Sabin, president of Kill Rock Stars, delves into a topic of interest to music industry professionals, musicians, and regular people alike by discussing important issues with great people who work every day to help artists succeed (largely behind the scenes).
Kill Rock Stars is dedicated to putting out exceptional records by important artists. At KRS we believe in doing it yourself, and we see our job as helping bands to realize their visions. We feel lucky that we get to work with artists who challenge mediocrity on a regular basis.
XRAY.FM's mission is to hold a microphone up to the best and most distinctive of Portland. To build a culturally relevant center for ideas, music, and creativity in service of a more open media and a more just community.CORIN TUCKER
PETER BUCK
Guitarist for R.E.M..
DJ KLYPH
Klyph has been representing the under-represented since 2009 on the Portland FM radio dial and expanded outlets of podcasting and live shows. With a consistent goal of inclusion and building community with talented individuals presenting a positive message.
Broken Social Scene
"I don't want to go out there being presumptuous," Kevin Drew says, "because, I've worn those presumptuous shoes before, and you don't want it to feel like, 'Oh, what a let-down.'" That's the fear when you bring back one of music's most beloved names seven years after their last album. But with Hug of Thunder, the fifth Broken Social Scene album, Drew and his bandmates have a right to feel presumptuous.
They have that right because they have created one of 2017's most sparkling, multi-faceted albums. On Hug of Thunder the 15 members of Broken Social Scene - well, the 15 who play on the record, including returnees Leslie Feist and Emily Haines - refract their varying emotions, methods and techniques into something that doesn't just equal their other albums, but surpasses them. It is righteous but warm, angry but loving, melodic but uncompromising. The title track on its own might just be the best thing you will hear all year - a song that will become as beloved as "Anthems For a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" from their breakthrough album, You Forgot It In People.
Its title, Drew says, captured what he wanted people to feel about the group's comeback, and how they sound playing together again: "It's just such a wonderful sentiment about us, coming in like a hug of thunder."
Broken Social Scene had reconvened, in varying forms, several times over the past four years
- the odd festival show here and there, preferably ones that involved the least possible travelling. But the idea that they might turn their hand to something more than greatest-hits sets had been stirring since November 2014, when producer Joe Chiccarelli told Drew the group needed to make a new album.
"He started showing up at our label, asking if we were going to make an album," Drew recalls. "He just didn't give up; he just kept saying, 'You've got to strike, you've got to do this, the time is now,' and so finally we agreed."
As might be expected to be the case with a many-headed hydra of a group, getting all the principals to agree wasn't easy. Drew's co-founder Brendan Canning was keen, but Drew and fellow BSS lifer Charles Spearin took more persuading. A turning point for Drew came with the Paris terror attacks of November 2015, which made him feel the world needed an injection of positivity: "It just sort of made us want to go out there and play. Because I think we've always been a band that's been a celebration."
Canning picks up the story: "By autumn of 2015 we had started getting together and trying some ideas out, just getting back in that jam space, in Charles' garage. Then we set up shop in my living room and we were starting to come together in a very familiar kind of way, jamming in the living room, eating meals in the kitchen together, because that's what the band is about: 'Hey, let's all get on the same page and get the energies flowing in the same direction.'"
Recording finally began in April 2016 at The Bathouse studio on the shores of Lake Ontario, with later sessions in Toronto and Montreal, before the group went right back to basics. "It was very beautiful the way that it ended in Charlie's little rehearsal garage space," Drew says, "after going to all these studios. We just worked there, doing back-up vocals and handclaps and all the shit we used to do when we were younger." And then it was to Los Angeles, where the album was mixed.
The result is a panoramic, expansive album, 53 minutes that manages to be both epic and intimate. In troubled times it offers a serotonin rush of positivity: "Stay Happy" lives up to its title, with huge surges of brass that sound like sunshine bursting through clouds. "Gonna Get Better" makes a promise that the album is determined to deliver. That's not to say it's an escapist record: Broken Social Scene are completely engaged, wholly focussed, and not ignoring the darkness that lurks outside. But there is no hectoring, no lecturing, but a recognition of the confusion and ambiguity of the world. As the title track closes with Leslie Feist murmuring "There was a military base across the street," the listener is caught in the division between the notional security provided by national defence, and the menace of the same thing.
The gestation of Hug of Thunder was no idyll. When You Forgot It in People made their name, Broken Social Scene were young men and women. Fifteen years on, they were adults in or on the cusp of middle age, and - as Drew puts it - "all the adult problems in the world were happening around us individually, whether it was divorce or cancer". Three members of the band lost their fathers while the album was being recorded, "and it seemed like the days of going in the studio, getting stoned, drinking five beers and saying, 'Who gives a fuck?' were over".
Then there's the fact of the size of the ensemble, and the number of competing voices. "You don't always get the final say with Broken Social Scene," Canning says, with a certain degree of understatement. He compares the process of getting everyone to agree on a song to party politics: "It's like you're trying to get a bill passed through the House - you have to be really committed to wanting to win."
But, still, if they were to return, it had to be with everybody, no matter if that meant things might get unwieldy. "I'd like to believe that Broken Social Scene can be whatever it can be," Canning says, "but I think the fact we'd gone away for so long meant we really, we really couldn't have done the same thing without everyone involved, you know?" The story of
Broken Social Scene, he insists, was built on the involvement of everyone, and so if the story was to be continued, those same people had to return.
"The thing that has changed is that the relationships between us are established," Drew suggests. "And in a family, you ebb and flow and you come and you go and you're in love and then you're annoyed - but it's established now, the relationships aren't going anywhere, you know? And I think through time, because we've been through so much together, personally and professionally, when we're all on stage, everybody knows what they're doing, everybody has a melody to back up someone else, you feel supported, you're a crew, there's nothing but protection all around you."
Canning picks up the theme: "Before we were making this record, I said to everyone: 'We all basically want the same thing, we might just have slightly different road-maps on how to get there. So how do we stray off on certain country roads but get back onto the main thoroughfare?'"
That Broken Social Scene were a family again, driving along the same main road, became apparent to UK fans in September 2016, when the group - with Ariel Engle the latest woman to assume the role of co-lead vocalist - came over for less than a handful of festival shows, to test the waters. Their Sunday teatime appearance at End Of The Road - an ecstatic hour of maximalist music, physically and emotionally overwhelming - ended up being one of the biggest hits of the festival. It achieved what Drew has always felt music needed to do: it created transcendence, a pocket of time where everyone present was living only in the moment.
"My 11 year old nephew asked me, 'Uncle Kev, why do adults get drunk?' and I looked at him and thought, 'OK, brilliant question, I'm going to give a brilliant answer,'" Drew recalls. "And I looked at him for about 10 seconds and I said, 'Because they want to feel like you. Because they want to feel like a kid again, they want to forget everything, they want to be innocent.' We are built in a way now where you can't do that, because you're walking around with the anti-transcendence box in your pocket, and in your hand, and in your home, and on your bedside table: it's the anti-transcendence. It's called your phone! And we're getting killed, we're getting killed!"
So what do Broken Social Scene want listeners to take from Hug of Thunder? Canning wants it to make them "pause for the cause and maybe just leave things in your life alone for 53 minutes". For Drew, it's about what it's always been about: making the connection. "I just hope they understand that there's others out there, that they're not alone," he says. "I know that's silly! But you'd be surprised how many times I've had to tell people, 'Hey, you're not alone on this, you're not alone thinking these things.' I mean, with the title Hug of Thunder, I want to hold people. I want to fucking hold them. And when we do shows, I'm not: 'Look at me, I'm elevated up on the stage,' It's: 'We're here with you, this is us together.' Broken Social Scene is about the people, and it's always been about the people."
Depeche Mode:
As promised, Depeche Mode continues to roll out their Global Spirit Tour, with the second leg bringing their stunning live show to fans across North America this fall.
Following an extensive European summer tour, the 28 show North American run, exclusively promoted by Live Nation, will kick off on August 23rd in Salt Lake City, UT and will stop in 26 cities across the United States and Canada, before wrapping up in Edmonton, Alberta on October 27th.
Fans can register now for early access to tickets at presale.depechemode.com. By registering, fans will reserve a spot in line for the fan presale, which they can then improve by sharing their unique presale link with friends and family, or by preordering Depeche Mode’s new album Spirit. On March 6, days before tickets go on general sale to the public, fans who have registered will be let into a special ticket presale in waves, based on their place in line.
The European stadium leg of the Global Spirit Tour, running May through July, has already sold over 1.5 million tickets and has sold-out shows across Europe – just the start of what is poised to be a record-breaking global tour. The Global Spirit Tour will later bring the band to Latin America, with details to be announced shortly.
The Global Spirit Tour is in support of the band’s upcoming 14th studio album, Spirit, out on March 17th via Columbia Records. The album’s powerful and timely first single, “Where’s The Revolution”, has already been well-received by critics and fans alike, lauded as a strong “return to form” for Depeche Mode. Spirit has already garnered critical acclaim in early previews, with Q Magazine calling it “the most energized Depeche Mode album in years”.
Warpaint
Warpaint will be on the road for the next couple of months behind their latest album, Heads Up. One run of North American dates in particular will see them support UK legends Depeche Mode, who also recently put out their Spirit LP.
This newly unveiled trek takes place from late August through late October, with stops scheduled in Denver, Chicago, Montreal, New York, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. It’s part of Depeche Mode’s larger stateside Spirit tour and comes after Warpaint’s busy summer spent playing festivals like Governors Ball in New York, Rock Werchter in Belgium, and Lollapalooza.
The Black Angels
Alex Maas – vocals, bass, organ/drone machine
Christian Bland – guitar, drone machine/organ
Kyle Hunt – keyboards, percussion, bass, guitar
Stephanie Bailey – drums, percussion
The Black Angels' most revelatory collection thus far, Indigo Meadow marks the Austin, Texas-based band's fourth full-length release, following 2010's acclaimed Phosphene Dream.
Once again The Black Angels prove themselves the undisputed avatars of contemporary psychedelic rock, simultaneously exalting the genre's kaleidoscopic past as they thrust it ever
further into the future.
Now a quartet, the band – with the able support of producer John Congleton (David Byrne & St. Vincent, Clinic, Explosions In The Sky) – have brought new focus to their wide-ranging
songcraft, their righteous riffs and dogmatic drones gaining increased power as they fuel a more expansive emotional trajectory. The ominous organ grooves and carpet-bombing beats still resonate with feral rush and napalm fire, but songs like "Love Me Forever" and the bottomless blue title track see more than a little light piercing the Black Angels' notorious
heart of darkness.
"There's a different feel to it than any of our other records, " says singer/multi-instrumentalist Alex Maas. "It still has those 'What the hell's going on?' moments, but when you're having a psych experience, you don't want it to be dark all the time. That's not where you want to be."
Phosphene Dream was followed by two years of nearly non-stop touring, a thrilling, often grueling run that by its end saw the band's roster diminished but their spirit restored. The Black Angels closed the circle and in January 2012 they convened to begin writing and woodshedding new material. The next few months turned out to be the most artistically fecund of the band's career, their fresh energy unlocking an abundance of songs and intriguing musical options.
"A weight was lifted off of us," guitarist Christian Bland says. "It's like ESP when you're playing together, like you're channeling something. If someone isn't in the same headspace, then the ESP feels disrupted."
In August, The Black Angels headed to El Paso's renowned Sonic Ranch. Located on 2,300 acres of pecan orchards bordering the Rio Grande and Mexico, the studio – the largest
residential recording complex in the world – proved the ideal locale for the band's aural adventurism.
"It's awesome to be out there, away from everything, and just be saturated in the music," Maas says. "You have nowhere else to go but the studio. It was really healthy for us, a really healthy experience."
Furthermore, the band's choice of producer/mixer John Congleton allowed for an extra set of ears, not to mention a tie-breaking vote in the ever-democratic Black Angels hierarchy."When we work with a producer," Bland says, "the hope is that they'll give us that extra push that we need and that's what John did. He became the fifth member. It can be
nerve-wracking working with someone you don't really know but we felt like he was coming from where we were coming from."
Positive vibrations shine through Indigo Meadow, with radiant new hues spilling out like a blindingly bright field of Texas bluebonnets over the Black Angels' traditionally shadowy
palette. "I Hear Colors (Chromaesthesia)," in many ways the album's centerpiece and overall sonic manifesto, is a 21st century trip as transcendent as any anthem in the psychedelic canon, while the wyrd folk-flavored closer, "Black Isn't Black," points towards heretofore unventured musical and emotional terrain.
"We make this music because it makes us feel good," Maas says, "we hope – that it makes other people feel good. People ask me what I do and I tell them I'm a music therapist. It
sounds completely ridiculous but that's how I see myself, that's how I see our band, that's how I see music in general – as therapy for people. Without it, life would be so much harder."
"There are still some pretty evil songs on there," reminds Bland. "I like the juxtaposition of something sounding sweet but maybe there's an underbelly to it, so if you dive in further you get the full story."
To be sure, all is not moon pies and rainbows 'round Indigo Meadow – this is The Black Angels after all. Tracks like the high-powered "Don't Play With Guns" and the post-traumatic acid-punk of "Broken Soldier" continue the band's longstanding role as psychedelic provocateurs, exploring archetypal themes of wasteful wars, creeping paranoia, and the corruption of power to score a disorienting soundtrack to our own increasingly
Strangelovian culture.
"There are a lot of fucked up things going on in this world," Maas says. "We're lucky to have an outlet and a platform to acknowledge these issues."
Founded in 2004, The Black Angels have been the spearhead of the post-millennial psychedelic movement, picking up the mantle of their hometown's long lysergic history and
reinvigorating it with progressive political commentary and unrestrained creativity and ambition. Like any great psychedelic family band worth its salt, they have also birthed their
own cottage industry, from The Reverberation Appreciation Society label (home to numerous new psychedelicists as well as their own many extracurricular outings) to hosting the annual
gathering of the tribes at the amazing Austin Psych Fest. Now entering its sixth year, APF has proven the locus for today's incredibly wide-ranging psych scene, as expansive and
revolutionary and exhilarating now as at any moment since its 1960s zenith.
"We took it upon ourselves to help expand the genre," Maas says, "not just sonically but let other people around the world experience it. And then vice verse, bring psychedelic music
from all over the world to Austin."
Indigo Meadow affirms The Black Angels' spot at the forefront of what is looking like a third psychedelic golden age, as hypnogogic production, mysterious world music jams, andpropulsive, primitive pulsebeats come to define the sound of modern rock music, from the always audacious underground all the way to the cultural mainline.
"I can see it bubbling right now," says Bland. "It needs to steam over. It'd be pretty cool if we could do a little psych takeover. Back in the early 2000s, when I heard the Strokes and the White Stripes on the radio, that really stood out to me. It was different and it really inspired me. I'd love for that to happen again, maybe with one of our songs, and for there to be a complete overhaul of how people listen to music again."
"You get jealous in a good way," Maas says of the modern psych boom, "so it pushes you. It's inspiring. It's great to see it, it's great to be a part of it. It reconfirms to us that we're
doing the right thing."
With each new record, The Black Angels have consistently elevated their art, their creative voice becoming clearer and more distinct. Indigo Meadow continues their extraordinary
evolution, its monumental melodies and vast vision marking it as testament to the band's full-throttle commitment to the psychedelic ethos of ritual, community and boundless
experimentation.
"Music is a spiritual thing for us," Maas says. "It's what's kept our band united. Music is our religion. That word can be so dirty sometimes, but this music is our spirituality. Without sounding too hippy-dippy about it."
Formed in 1987 in the sleepy coastal town of Irvine, Scotland and acclaimed for their delicate, deft, and often witty songwriting courtesy of hyper articulate lead singer Frank Reader, the band’s early days suggested they were destined for world wide fame. Their John Leckie produced debut, Cake, spawned bona fide alternative radio hits in "Obscurity Knocks", "Only Tongue Can Tell" and "Circling the Circumference". In the US Cake spent three months on the Billboard 200. The follow up album, I've Seen Everything, released in 1993, included the single “Hayfever" which had entertaining honor of being featured on the the MTV animated series, Beavis and Butthead. But the band’s third album, A Happy Pocket marked the beginning of a tumultuous period for the band. A Happy Pocket was released in the UK and Japan, but was unavailable in the U.S. after the band's American distributor declined to release the record. After Go!Discs was acquired by Universal in 1996, the band was dropped from the label, subsequently forced to sell their Shabby Road recording studio and declare bankruptcy.
Since then, their recording and touring has been sporadic but now, after 30 years together and with over 100 songs under their belt - most recently from their acclaimed 2016 Mike Mogis-produced album Wild Pendulum- they’re taking to the road for their most extensive US tour in decades. These special acoustic shows will feature arrangements for every song in the catalog, whether fan (or band) favorites, deep album cuts or obscure B-sides. These intimate performances will remind their feverishly loyal fans what made them fall in love in the first place.
The A.V. Club said “Wild Pendulum is lovingly crafted, with layers in all the right places, ” while Allmusic exclaimed the album is “quite likely the best sophisticated guitar pop album anyone is likely to hear in 2016.”
For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She's been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.
Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova's longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi's textural universe.
With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album peaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas.
While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn't sure I'd find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will.
Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We're all shackled to something -- to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?
This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I'll ever have to blood-bound family.
Lose Yr Mind is a two day independent warehouse festival that has a tendency to focus on garage, punk and psych music. Join us as we celebrate our 4th and biggest year at The North Warehouse (N. Interstate + N. Tillamook) with musical performaces by:
+ FRIDAY OCTOBER 20 +
Wand 11:50-12:40pm
Chastity Belt 10:45-11:30pm
The Ghost Ease 9:50-10:25pm
Lithics 9:00-9:30pm
Darto 8:15-8:45pm
Late night set by: Frankie & The Witch Fingers 1:00-1:35am
+ SATURDAY OCTOBER 21 +
Twin Peaks 12:10-late
Tacocat 11:05-11:50pm
Public Eye 10:10-10:45pm
BlackWater HolyLight 9:20-9:50pm
Night Heron 8:30-9:00pm
Both nights are 21+ and doors open at 8pm. Light projections, local sponsors, DJs, outdoor arcade + more!
Visit www.loseyrmind.com for full details and stay up to date by RVSPing to the Facebook event here.
Support these businesses becuase they support us:
The Liquor Store
Eleven PDX Magazine
Portland Mercury
Tender Loving Empire
Humm Kombucha
New Deal Distillery
ATLAS Cider Company
Misplaced Screen Printing
Ninkasi Brewing
QuarterWorld Portland
Union Wine Company
XRAY.FM
Vortex Music Magazine
JAWBREAKER: DON'T BREAK DOWN
Bassist Chris Bauermeister in attendance for a Q&A!
In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits; the three members Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnected in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
Passes Accepted: Guest Pass and Member Guest Pass.
Sponsored by Music Millenium, XRAYFM, and Lagunitas Brewing.
JAWBREAKER: DON'T BREAK DOWN
Bassist Chris Bauermeister in attendance for a Q&A!
In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits; the three members Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnected in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
Passes Accepted: Guest Pass and Member Guest Pass.
Sponsored by Music Millenium, XRAYFM, and Lagunitas Brewing.
Iron & Wine
I must confess that I’ve always shied away from album introductions citing
the usual "dancing to architecture" cop out. Speaking to their own work is
uncomfortable for many artists, but I’ve made a new album called Beast Epic
which is important to me and I wanted to take a moment to talk about why. I’ve
been releasing music for about fifteen years now and I feel very blessed to have
put out five other full lengths, many EPs and singles, a few collaborations with
people much more talented than myself, and made contributions to numerous
movie scores and soundtracks. This is my sixth collection of new Iron & Wine
material and I’m happy to say that it’s my fourth for Sub Pop Records.
It’s a warm and serendipitous time to be reuniting with my Seattle friends
because I feel there’s a certain kinship between this new collection of songs and
my earliest material, which Sub Pop was kind enough to release. In hindsight,
both The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and Our Endless Numbered Days
(2004) epitomize a reflective and confessional songwriting style (although done
with my own ferocious commitment to understatement, of course). I have been
and always will be fascinated by the way time asserts itself on our bodies and our
hearts. The ferris wheel keeps spinning and we’re constantly approaching,
leaving or returning to something totally unexpected or startlingly familiar. The
rite of passage is an image I've returned to often because I feel we’re all
constantly in some stage of transition. Beast Epic is saturated with this idea but
in a different way simply because each time I return to the theme, I’ve collected
new experiences to draw from. Where the older songs painted a picture of youth
moving wide-eyed into adulthood’s violent pleasures and disappointments, this
collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up after you’ve already
grown up. For me, that experience has been more generous in its gifts and
darker in its tragedies.
The sound of Beast Epic harks back to previous work, in a way, as well.
By employing the old discipline of recording everything live and doing minimal
overdubbing, I feel like it wears both its achievements and its imperfections on its
sleeve. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sonics
and songwriting styles and all that traveled distance is evident in the feel and the
arrangements here, but the muscles seemed to have relaxed and been allowed
to effortlessly do what they do best.
I’ve been fortunate to get to play with some very talented musicians over the
years who are both uniquely intuitive and also expressive in exciting ways. This
group was no different. We spent about two weeks recording and mixing but
mostly laughing at The Loft in Chicago.
To be honest, I’ve named this record BEAST EPIC mostly because it
sounds really fucking cool! However, with that said and perhaps to be completely
honest, “a story where animals talk and act like people” sounds like the perfect
description for the life of any of us. If not that, then it’s at least perfect for any
group of songs I’ve ever tried to make. I hope you enjoy it. — Sam Beam, Iron
& Wine.
Annie Hart (of Au Revoir Simone)
Annie Hart is best known as one-third of Au Revoir Simone, the beloved all-female synth trio that counts David Lynch as a superfan (& also recently appeared on Twin Peaks). But with the eight tracks on her solo debut, Impossible Accomplice (Uninhabitable Mansions, July 28), Annie will emerge as an electrifying artist and producer in her own right.
During the band's hiatus, she has been crafting pop songs on classic synthesizers, with a less-is-more approach, writing and engineering the record on her own in the basement of her Brooklyn home, sneaking sessions in while her children were sleeping. Greatly influenced by the spare synthesizer sounds of Laurie Spiegel and the post-punk sensibility of artists like Tubeway Army, Annie has embraced her love of meticulously crafting the perfect tone to match the emotion of a song. "Be it melancholy, longing, happiness or simple desire, there is no better way to explain my innermost world than by going past words and into the intuitive and visceral feeling that a particular sound can evoke.”
In songs such as the first single, "Hard To Be Still" (featured on an upcoming episode of Netflix series, Gypsy, starring Naomi Watts), Annie cuts back the layers to reveal a rawer version of the dreamy synth pop her band was famous for forging. Solo, Annie has opened for artists such as M. Ward and Neko Case, and will be playing a handful of shows this summer in support of the new record.
Madeline Kenney
Raised in the Pacific Northwest, the nature of the region is important to songwriter Madeline Kenney. A soil-tethered root to the natural world is subtly noticeable in Kenney’s art. Bare feet, fresh fruit, the brilliant moon. Despite her affinity for the green leaves and the black grass, Kenney has lived rather nomadically, transferring her being and belongings for long stays in the mountains of British Columbia, the islands of Hawaii, and around the globe. She moved to the Bay Area in 2013 to pursue a career in baking. In Oakland, a supportive arts community inspired great growth as a musician. A chance encounter with Company Records label head Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi) led to them recording the Signals EP together, along with Kenney’s brand-new album, set to come out in fall 2017. Kenney’s huge voice delivers emotional brushstrokes and unexpected lyrical knots.
An intuitively self-taught guitarist, Johanna Warren channels powerful songs in weird time signatures and melancholic open tunings, weaving adept finger-picking with acrobatic vocal lines and carefully crafted poetry in reverence of her patron songwriting saints Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake. Approaching music as a potent healing modality, Warren cultivates and honors the physically healing properties of sound and the spiritually healing powers of artistic expression.
Los Angeles’s prodigal songwriting son Ariel Pink shares his eleventh studio album, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, September 15.
The album’s title makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life L.A. musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “His book and life resonated with me to such a degree,” Pink states, “that I felt a need to dedicate my latest record to him.”
Dedicated to Bobby Jameson begins at the end and ends at the beginning. “We follow the protagonist through a battery of tests and milestones, the first of which sees him reborn into life out of death,” Pink explains, referencing the opening track “Time To Meet Your God.” “From there, he seesaws his way between the innocent love and the rock- solid edifice of childhood-worn trauma that together constitute his lifelong initiation into the realm of artifice and theatrical disposability.”
Building upon his singular vision of pop songcraft, established by such seminal records as The Doldrums, Worn Copy, House Arrest, Loverboy, Before Today, Mature Themes, and pom pom, Pink revisits themes that have haunted his sonic cinemascapes since the late 1990s: mismanaged dreams, west coast mythologies, itinerant criminals, haunted boulevards, Hollywood legends, the impermanence of romance, bubblegum artifice, movie stardom, childhood terror, acceptance of self, and narcissism projected through a celluloid filter of controversion.
Raised in Beverly Hills, Ariel Pink (born Ariel Marcus Rosenberg) started out as a visual artist before becoming a recording artist in the late ‘90s while attending Cal Arts. Between 1996 and 2004, he honed his craft writing, performing, recording, and producing a body of work that was experimental, impressionistic, and improvisational— often creating melodic accompaniments and percussive elements with his voice, as opposed to traditional drums or drum machines.
In 2003, Pink attracted the attention of Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, earning his home recordings a small and devoted fan base through a series of limited edition reissues. Drawing upon a list of long-forgotten iconoclasts and trailblazers like the Shaggs, the Cure, the Velvet Underground, Destroy All Monsters, the Godz, Cabaret Voltaire, and R. Stevie Moore, Pink set himself to the task of redefining the musical lexicon for himself and others. “This mission,” he says, “remains mine to this day.”
Though critically misunderstood at the time, Pink’s lo-fi recordings wielded an enormous influence with insiders and outsiders, earning him the unsolicited distinction as “the godfather of chillwave” and the face of the emergent genre of Hypnagogic Pop. Upon signing to the landmark record label 4AD in 2009, Pink’s fortunes with critics began to reverse, and his resulting first single, “Round and Round,” was named the #1 Record of 2010 by Pitchfork.
Since that period, Pink’s influence has grown, even as he and his work have waxed and waned within the popular political conversation. His music, in its earnest genre drag, continues to polarize. His embrace of the dark edges of human folly and despair is juxtaposed with superficial joy, touching on aspects normally avoided in pop music like sarcasm, suspicion, nihilism, self-loathing, and denial. These shadows of the self make their brighter counterparts—love, desire, nostalgia, dreams, acceptance, and epiphany—all the more transcendent, striking deep chords of emotion with fans. In his frenzied portrayals of humanity’s baseness and beauty, Ariel Pink spins pathos into paradise.
Standout tracks from Dedicated to Bobby Jameson include “Feels Like Heaven,” a lovelorn insta-classic paying tribute to the promise of romance, “Another Weekend,” which encapsulates the lingering euphoria of a regrettable weekend over the edge, “Dedicated to Bobby Jameson,” a rah-rah psych romp paying homage to L.A.’s punk history, and “Time to Live,” an ironic anti-suicide anthem that promotes survival as a form of resistance before devolving into a grungy, “Video Killed the Radio Star”-style breakdown that supposes life and death as being more or less the same fate and embraces the immortal anarchy of a rock song as an alternative to the prison of reality.
Alternately contained and sprawling, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson is a shimmering pop odyssey that represents more astonishing peaks and menacing valleys in the career of a man who, through sheer originality and nerve, has become an American rock and roll institution. The album marks his first full-length release with the Brooklyn-based independent label Mexican Summer.
Valerie Teicher (born Buenos Aires, Argentina), best known by her stage name Tei Shi, is a singer-songwriter and producer currently based in Brooklyn. Incorporating the genres of shoegaze, indie pop, and R&B, she released her first singles and music videos in 2013.
Tickets are $17
21+
PDX Hip Hop Day is a celebration of Hip Hop cuture in the city of Portland. This will be the 3rd annual Portland Hip Hop Day. Come enjoy great performances from Portland artists and artists that have contributed to the Portland Hip Hop sceen. Have some food and get a taste of Hip Hop culture at this all ages event.
Performers:
Rasheed Jamal
WYNNE
Brookfield Duece & Friends
Fountaine
Hosted by StarChile
Music provided by Dj O.G. One
Food provided by Hana's & Stoopid Burger
NO COVER // ALL AGES
Green Empowerment partners with rural communities and NGOs in developing countries to improve access to affordable and renewable energy, safe drinking water, sanitation systems, and fuel efficient cook stoves. Combined with community organizing, these technologies enable individuals and families to dramatically improve their quality of life by reducing disease, improving developmental outcomes, and freeing up time to focus on income generation. Rooted in our core values of social justice, sustainability and local leadership, Green Empowerment is building a pathway to prosperity by providing individuals and families with consistent access to basic resources.
Public Expo: 1-4pm - Free Admittance and Family Friendly
VIP Expo: 5-7pm - Includes VIP Tour, Food, Cocktails, Speakers, Entry To Party ($100)
Party: 7-11pm - Includes Snacks, Drinks, Live Entertainment, Raffles ($40)
For More Info: https://www.greenempowerment.org/passport/
Palehound
Since forming in 2014, Palehound — fronted by singer / songwriter Ellen Kempner – has taken their plainspoken, technique-heavy indie rock from the basements of Boston to festivals around the world.
The band’s critically acclaimed 2015 debut album, Dry Food, landed them on numerous “Best Of 2015” lists with NPR, VICE’s Noisey, Paste Magazine, The Observer, Consequence Of Sound, The Boston Globe, The Austin Chronicle + many more. Since then the band has toured virtually non-stop, headlining club tours in both the US and the UK, as well as going out with Torres, Bully, Mitski, PWRBTTM and a variety of other bands, developing a ferocious live set in the process.
The band’s sophomore album, A Place I'll Always Go, is out June 16, 2017 on Polyvinyl Record Company.
Hoop
Soft rock band expressing the feelings we get from knowing people, learning about the world we
live in, and making our own worlds. Quiet distortion, anti-metallica, alt-rock gold.
Tim Grimm is a Rennaisance man in the performing arts world. He has for the past 15 years blended his love for songwriting, travel, and the storytelling of acting (theatre, film and television). His most recent recording, The Turning Point, produced the #1 song on folk radio in 2014-- King of the Folksingers. It was a particularly gratifying honor, given the song is a tribute to Tim's friend and musical icon, Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Tim's history with Ramblin' Jack goes back 30 years-- beginning with a bicycle ride that led to The Newport Folk Festival….