You can only imagine how close the guys from Olympia’s K Records and Portland’s Marriage Records must be. Lately, there’s been overlap between bands and artists: First, Calvin Johnson put out Marriage’s founder Adrian Orange’s latest album. Now, Marriage subsidiary Rad Records, is putting out longtime K-ster Little Wings’ (aka Kyle Field) latest release, Soft [...]

Somehow between leaving Galway, playing shows in Dublin and London, and flying over to the mainland, we forgot to leave time for any proper rest. This was not a great idea. We could really use a tour manager (where are you, Yoni!?). Needless to say, this part of our trip has gone a bit [...]

Two Menomena items today!
The first is that the band recently paired with a Boston-based shoe company, PF Flyers, to produce the its latest video—a high end computer graphics affair about a horny ass bee. Don’t freak out—the video (set to debut Saturday at the PF Flyers website) doesn’t feature any in-video shoe branding. PF just [...]

The trio of Reporter has been quick to clean the slate after a damn impressive run as Wet Confetti. “Blaze,” a taste of their new shtick is a little less schizo, a little more cooly melodic. WC fans shouldn’t despair: Reporter is just a little more vocally enunciated and pronounced, and the guitars—more boldly [...]

The inaugural Halleluwah Festival of Enthused Arts was epic. Massive to the point of absurdity. Indie-pop kids, noise-heads and music geeks of the hardest core were practically locked into the massive, industrial R.J. Templeton building, former home of Disjecta, for two sweaty, 14-hour days of musical marathon.
There were two stages hosting simultaneous shows nearly [...]

[INDIE ROCK] Deer or the Doe’s debut album, Go to Sleep Quit Listening, is a tease. Recorded with engineer Skyler Norwood (who’s worked with the likes of Talkdemonic and Horse Feathers), it’s an arresting, six-track indie-rock escapade sliced with lo-fi twinkling pop. But despite all the restless riffs waiting to break out into spastic mayhem, [...]

[COUNTRY ROCK] Local twang-rock outfit Power of County has been kicking shit, so to speak, around Portland for a few years now. But thanks to a serendipitous tour with prodigal grandson Hank Williams III and alt-country writer Jim Goad, Power of County recently got the chance to showcase its matching, moniker-bearing black leather vests to [...]

[PROGRESSIVE BLUES] It took me a while to really hear Joe McMurrian. I tried listening as early as 2001; I heard a deft young guitarist with a smoke-gray voice playing acoustic blues—and instantly wrote him off as a too-conscious retread of Portland’s Kelly Joe Phelps, whose widespread recognition was then still new.
But [...]

[GLAM ROCK] Roller-skating fans, rejoice. For one night, you can relive your childhood roller-rink birthday parties—but with spandex, booze and rock ’n’ roll.
“We just love the roller disco,” says Tony Mengis, bassist for local quintet the Soda Pop Kids. Fittingly, the band’s playing an unofficial release show for its upcoming debut, Teen Bop Dream [...]