Eugene Weekly

Jared Pellerin grew up in New Orleans but was displaced in high school when Hurricane Katrina hit. Forced to abandon all of his possessions and take with him only his resilience and the influence of New Orleans’ music culture, Pellerin relocated with his family to Jackson, Mississippi.  “Heard it’s the darkest before the dawn, the calmest before the storm” Pellerin intones on his 2014 debut album, Floating While Dreaming.  Continue reading →

Last year, Seattle band Chastity Belt released its debut, Time to Go Home, on Hardly Art, a subsidiary of Sub Pop Records used to foster and grow interesting bands that might not otherwise be quite ready for prime time.  The album runs the gamut of Northwest indie rock: a little Riot Grrrl here, a little Nirvana there, a little Sleater-Kinney elsewhere. Listen closely and hear the guitar tone of REM’s Peter Buck on the song “Trapped.”  Continue reading →

Is another run through of Burt Bacharach’s music really what the world needs now? Continue reading →

Ani DiFranco doesn’t mince words: Her current tour is called Vote Dammit! The objective is to ignite the political fires of an audience through music and community building.  “It’s about participation,” DiFranco tells EW. “If we sit out on election day, bad things will happen, but if everyone who could vote would vote we’d have a better country.”  Continue reading →

Metric always seemed a bit timeless to me, which might explain why it freaks me out that the Canadian band has been together for nearly two decades. How have they managed to continue headlining theaters like the McDonald even as fellow Canadian contemporaries like Broken Social Scene and Stars faded from view?  Continue reading →

L.A.-based instrumental jazz-rock outfit Kneebody and electronic producer and muttonchops enthusiast Daedelus are the kind of musicians who blow apart any form of genre classification.  “For better or worse, we refuse to be pigeonholed in one sound,” explains Kneebody bassist Kaveh Rastegar of his band’s eclectic tendencies. “You’ll hear music that pulls from elements of EDM, jazz, indie rock and re-contextualizes everything with improvisation.”  Continue reading →

Badi Assad comes from a distinguished Brazilian musical family, but she’s blazed new trails, not just as a guitarist (like her brothers Sergio and Odair) but also as a vocalist and body-and-vocal percussionist. Her musical vision broadened to embrace jazz, pop and world music, including collaborations with jazz giants John Abercrombie and Larry Coryell, as well as covers of U2, Bjork, Tori Amos and more.  Continue reading →