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Will Kennedy is a freelance writer and a senior music writer with Eugene Weekly. He lives in Eugene with his wife, daughter and two cats. All of whom politely accommodate his obsessions with Doctor Who and The Smiths.
Nora Murphy Hughes of Portland band Hollow Sidewalks is eight months alcohol-free. She says this transformation in her life is reflected on her band’s new record, Year of the Fieldmouse. “Last year, when we did our first album, I was pretty fucked up — drinking and drugs,” Hughes explains. “It’s definitely a brighter, happier record than the last one. Overall there’s a more optimistic tone.” Continue reading
Indie video game developers from as far away as Seattle will showcase their work as part of Indie Game Play Test Night Friday, May 27, at Shoryuken League in downtown Eugene. Event coordinator Britt Brady says it’s crucial that game developers get their projects in front of a game playing audience as early as possible. “Game developers are very close to their games,” Brady says. “Before their game is out, this is a way for indie developers to get the public playing it — see what’s fun, see what people like, find bugs and also promote it.” Continue reading
The music of Canadian indie-rock group Supermoon is built from elements so delicately stacked it seems a cool breeze might knock them over. You want to catch the sound in a butterfly net, put it in a glass jar and keep it safely tucked on a shelf. “It’s pretty poppy with a dark undertone,” says Supermoon multi-instrumentalist Adrienne LaBelle, describing the band’s new release Playland. The album is out this month on Mint Records. Continue reading
Portland power-trio The Thermals are obsessed with death. “It’s a subject Hutch [Harris] and I think about a lot,” Thermals bassist Kathy Foster tells EW. Harris plays guitar, sings and is primary songwriter. “It’s always present,” she says of the specter of death. “Sometimes it can be scarier than other times. Sometimes I get obsessed with it, think about it a lot and have this doomed feeling: It’s inevitable.” Continue reading
Bay-area black-metal act Bosse-De-Nage makes music in a post-everything world. Read how the band’s sound is described in the media: post-hardcore, post-metal. It’s hard to know what any of that means. But listen to the band’s latest, 2015’s All Fours, and you can believe this might be music for a post-human world, or maybe a world where our industrial excesses finally overtake us — the sound of the last human hand reaching out from an oozing pool of toxic waste. Continue reading
Written by Joe DiPietro with music by Jimmy Roberts, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is a series of skit-like vignettes punctuated by songs loosely hung around themes of love, sex, relationships and marriage. First performed Off-Broadway in 1996, the popular and award-winning musical is on now at Actor’s Cabaret under the direction of Anthony Krall. Continue reading
Portland musician Pat Kearns is feeling reflective. “It’s just been where the songs have been taking me,” Kearns tells EW. “The stuff that I’ve been writing the last couple of years has just been a lot quieter. Maybe I’ll know all of this more when I reach the other side of it.” Continue reading
Muddy Waters changed Pokey LaFarge’s life. “I was, like, 13,” LaFarge tells EW, recalling the time some “older cats” played him Waters’ classic 1963 album Folk Singer at a pizza joint. “I thought, ‘Wow, the blues are acoustic?’” LaFarge recalls. “It changed my life.” Continue reading
Eugene old-timey country-blues act Breakers Yard releases its new album Tried & Untrue April 28 at Sam Bond’s. The self-produced record draws from traditions of pre-WWII jazz, country and blues. “Generally, our band pulls from that tradition for our sound, although we each have our own favorite genres,” says Brandon Olszewski, Breakers Yard guitar, harmonica and fiddle player. “In a way, and ideally, we appeal to folks that don’t really know the traditional canon of old blues dudes and hot jazz bands.” Continue reading
Something interesting happens at the end of Flatbush Zombies’ latest release, 3001: A Laced Odyssey. Halfway through the album’s closing track “Your Favorite Rap Song,” the music drifts away and in comes an extended series of voicemail-like recordings. Most are stoned treatises to the greatness of the Brooklyn hip-hop trio. “If this is the Flatbush Zombies, I just wanna say ya’ll fucking rock,” one voice says, holding in a bong rip. Continue reading