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You’re living in a sleepy, shitty, cozy little town and, suddenly, everything changes. It seems to happen overnight, like some bent fairy tale: The restaurants get way better, the drugs improve, coffee shops sprout on every corner, yippies start yammering about gentrification and yesterday’s wine, bourgeois hepcats from L.A. and Phoenix gallop in, now everyone’s either an artist or a suit or a fucking snake. Nostalgia hits the roof. Your rent spikes. Continue reading
Michigan band Frontier Ruckus is driving through the badlands of Wyoming. “I’m in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming,” says Matt Milia, Frontier Ruckus vocalist and primary songwriter. “The cell service is a little spotty.” This sense of expansive loneliness permeates the bittersweet power-pop of the band’s 2014 release, Sitcom Afterlife. “It was a break-up record,” Milia says. “It was an interesting juxtaposition of dark subject matter and power-pop.” Continue reading
In 1994, I was one year old, sitting in the grass wearing a blue floral dress and eating a Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Peace Pop. This made sense: Like many children of Deadheads, my parents had brought me to the Grateful Dead show at Autzen Stadium on June 17, 1994. My parents met in the summer of ’88 on their way to a Dead show at Autzen. My mom had never been to Oregon and needed a ride from Los Angeles; my dad gave her one. Five years later, I was born and they were taking me to Grateful Dead concerts. Continue reading
Neal Williams working on Ground Control label Continue reading
Comedian, author and actress Jen Kirkman is known for appearing on Chelsea Handler’s talk show Chelsea Lately and for being one of the first comedians to sign up for Drunk History. In 2013, Kirkman released the New York Times bestselling memoir, I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids. Continue reading
The subject matter of Crystal Moselle’s new documentary The Wolfpack sounds like the premise for some creepy, postmodern young-adult novel: In Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the seven Angulo siblings — six teenaged brothers and a sister, with names like Govinda, Bhagavan and Krsna — have been raised in almost total confinement, held captive in a subsidized apartment by their paranoid-mystic father and dazed, abused mother. Continue reading
Signing up Portland singer Storm Large as the star of The Seven Deadly Sins might seem like typecasting. After all, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s scorching 1933 satire tells the story of two sisters, Anna I and Anna II, who venture to a septet of cities, each representing one of the biblical mortal transgressions. Continue reading
It’s no easy task picking the top events of OBF, but here’s a working list. For a full lineup of events, times, locations and tickets, visit oregonbachfestival.com The Seven Deadly Sins, June 26, Hult Center Continue reading
More than a decade ago, in a speech at the Oregon Bach Festival, former New York Times classical music critic John Rockwell suggested that OBF bring in historically informed ensembles so audiences could hear how contemporary authentic-practice Baroque performances differed from then-OBF music director Helmuth Rilling’s “1950s and ’60s interpretations.” Continue reading
L.A. electro-pop duo Ultra Violent Rays draws comparisons to darkly sensual and moody acts like Portishead. The band describes their sound as “the hypothetical sonic lovechild of Siouxsie Sioux, Phantogram and the movie Blade Runner.” Ultra Violent Rays’ current single “Wish” is propelled by hypnotic, electronic drums, a ghostly whistle, shimmering and watery keyboards and vocalist Cooper Gillespie’s ethereal voice — borrowing an irresistible hook from childhood: “Wish I may/ Wish I might/ Find the words to make it right.” Continue reading