Music: Page 118

Just Dance

Music

Just before the bass drops into the thumping drumbeat on an electronica track, it’s easy to rush towards preconceived (and often negative) notions about popular “dance” music.  But lend brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence enough time and you’ll start dancing without even noticing. The Lawrences, better known as the English electronic duo Disclosure, have received Grammy nominations in the dance album category for their two studio releases, Settle (2014) and Caracal (2015).  Continue reading →

Get Heavy

Music

Heaviness is a fickle descriptive when it comes to music. Is it gauged by the power riffs of a Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin? The hyper-speed assault of a Slayer or Napalm Death? Maybe the slow, brutal chug of a Swans or Neurosis? Some even look to the dark undercurrent of early bluesmen like Blind Willie Johnson or Leadbelly (the name certainly checks out) as the true masters of heaviness. Continue reading →

Moon Pop

Music

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 →

Loud and Proud

OUT/LOUD Queer and Trans Women’s Music Festival celebrates its 16th year

Music
Taína Asili (center) with La Banda Rebelde

The battle for gender-inclusive spaces is in the white-hot spotlight recently, notably from backlash pertaining to the passage of transgender exclusionary bills such as North Carolina’s restriction on public restroom use in accordance with the sex assigned on a person’s birth certificate.  The need for gender-inclusivity in spaces like public restrooms and locker rooms is obvious to many, though the importance of inclusive creative and social spaces, like festivals and concert venues, is often overlooked.  Continue reading →

The Law of Thermal Dynamics

Get existential with Portland’s The Thermals

Music
The Thermals

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 →

A Post-Everything World

Music

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 →

The Queen Has Spoken

Music

Unfortunately, Beyoncé doesn’t seem to have Eugene in her sights and, if looking at the mostly male, mostly white lineups of Eugene’s biggest venues is any indication, they wouldn’t book her anyway. So to see Bey’s Lemonade tour, you’ll have to head north to Seattle. Continue reading →

The regional old-time scene is going to have one big hearth to gather round

Music
WOW Hall

The regional old-time scene is going to have one big hearth to gather round May 5-8: the inaugural Willamette Valley Old-Time Social put on by Eugene’s Mud City Old-Time Society. For the uninitiated, old-time music is an acoustic tradition of American music. Fiddle and banjo are the stars, making the sound a perfect catalyst for square dancing.  And old-time is not bluegrass; it gave birth to bluegrass. Old-time focuses on community and participation, regardless of skill level, more than performance. Continue reading →

So Long Portland, Hello Eugene

Music

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 →