Eugene Weekly

The Eugene Symphony has long-enjoyed a reputation as Oregon’s most forward-looking orchestra. Particularly after visionary music director Marin Alsop ascended the podium in 1989, the Eugene Symphony Orchestra’s programming of contemporary and especially American music put it — and Alsop — on the national map. While the usual 19th-century classics have always dominated the repertoire, Alsop’s successors Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Giancarlo Guerrero continued to feature more 20th- and 21st-century music than typical American orchestras.  Continue reading →

When your band is named He Whose Ox is Gored, people are going to have preconceived notions about what you sound like. “We started having that post-hardcore influence, a little bit of doom,” guitarist Brian McLelland tells EW. The up-and-coming Seattle quartet is touring in support of its latest release The Camel, The Lion, The Child, out now on Bleeding Light Records. But McLelland says it would be wrong, despite HWOIG’s epically dark name, to pigeonhole them as a metal band.  Continue reading →

Los Angeles hard-rock act Stitched Up Heart has a unique approach to self-promotion: They make music and share it live. With a handful of festivals and a few hundred shows under their belts since their 2010 inception, the band members shirk online promotion and big-hype tours in lieu of a simple work ethic and nose-to-grindstone approach.  Continue reading →

The members of Eugene post-rock band This Patch of Sky are just a bunch of romantics. “For a bunch of tattooed, bearded guys, we make pretty music,” guitarist Joshua Carlton jokes with EW. The band returns to the stage Aug. 22 at WOW Hall, alongside Hyding Jekyll, Children and Seattle’s Rishloo. But the reach of This Patch of Sky goes far beyond our fair valley; after picking up New York-based management, the band has scored several high profile licensing opportunities for its brand of post-rock. Continue reading →

Five years ago Pantheon frontman Skyeler Williams saw an opportunity where others might have merely seen cause for complaint. He perceived what he calls “a consistent exclusion of heavy music at community events.” Luckily for Eugene’s metal scene, the hardcore vocalist is not the type to take things lying down. As the music booker and sound engineer at downtown bar The Black Forest, Williams decided to take advantage of the tools available to him and set out to change things.  Continue reading →

In 2008, songwriter Kimya Dawson’s caustic naiveté perfectly captured the precocious character Juno from the popular film of the same name.  Dawson got her start alongside Adam Green in New York “anti-folk” duo Moldy Peaches. Together they made acoustic music that winked at folk and psychedelic idioms alongside sometimes surreal and sometimes hyper-real lyrics.  Continue reading →

Idealized non-conformism is not a revelation. Forty years ago, the punk movement built its own little utopia on a foundation of middle fingers. But what causes a movement to become a factory setting? Isn’t there inherent irony in a generation of non-conformists conforming to non-conformism, especially when that generation seems hard put to define the word irony? Continue reading →

Jazz sometimes gets slagged as mainly grooves for dudes, but women have always contributed enormously to the genre, even if they’ve not received attention proportionate to their contributions. This Thursday, Aug. 13 at The Shedd, the Oregon Festival of American Music (OFAM) showcases three of the most popular female jazz singers of the 1920s.  Continue reading →