We've got issues.
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
Do you think the band’s founders went through other options before settling on the name Dayglo Abortions back in 1979? Given the Canadian punk trio’s penchant for offensive juvenilia, it would probably be an incredible list. Continue reading
Why wait for summer to take your international vacation when you can take a musical world tour this month right here in Eugene? First stop: Brazil, via the great Oregon saxophonist Tom Bergeron’s Brasil Band concert May 21 at The Jazz Station. World-renowned Rio de Janeiro pianist and composer Marvio Ciribelli has appeared at jazz festivals around the world, and Bergeron has worked with everyone from Anthony Braxton to Ella Fitzgerald and Robert Cray. Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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