You know what? New Year’s Eve in Portland is bound to be kind of disappointing. For the most part, our city is already maxed-out in terms of how many cool shows can be going on any given weekend night. So if you’re expecting the most incredible night of your life tonight, it really isn’t any […]

“Oh yeah, he chopped a guy in half with an axe right over there,” says Frankie “Wrath,” the 19-year-old rhythm guitarist for Clit Ripper as I arrive at his Southeast Portland home. He and his girlfriend live two houses down from the former residence of Frank Hudson, a man accused of brutally murdering two people […]

What better way to lead into Wombstretcha the Magnificent’s response to last week’s Band Name of the Week post than with Sauce Policy, a band that implies on its MySpace that its music has the power to impregnate (their catch-phrase reads, “I saw Sauce Policy, now I’m pregnant…”). Ever since I first saw the band […]

WW’s Local Cut team picks the five best local albums of 2006.
Adrian Orange, Bitches Is Lord (Marriage):
For the record, this is a post-deadline reconsideration. My apologies to the Blow (whose Paper Television was heavily considered). Bitches Is Lord is simply the most devastatingly beautiful and devastatingly honest thing I’ve heard in the past year. And, […]

As you may have noticed, this week’s Willy Week is stock fulla year-end lists, including the Local Cutters’ picks for the best albums, songs, venues, labels and surprises of the year in local music. Check out all of those lists on the Willamette Week site or below under the heading “Paper Cuts,” and listen […]

 D. Yellow Swans, "I Woke Up": Play Now | Play in Popup

WW’s Local Cut team picks the five best performances by local bands in 2006.
White Rainbow, E*Rock, March 23 at Towne Lounge: Every stretched and bent guitar or vocal layer White Rainbow’s Adam Forkner packed into this half-hour psych meltdown was met with pure anxiety. In every corner, a member of Forkner’s phantom band lurked, cutting […]

WW’s Local Cut team picks the five best local songs of 2006.
D. Yellow Swans, “I Woke Up,” from Psychic Secession: At 11 minutes in length, this is about as concise as DYS gets. The opening minutes sound like an overloaded PGE substation, but a machinelike beat fights its way out, and that mangled industrial alchemy […]

Holy crap! It’s Christmas Eve and you forgot to get presents for anyone! Good news: Motivated by the fact that the 10 copies they sold of their first EP were subsequently burned for every hipster and middle school girl in the Northwest, Swimmers decided to cut out the middle man with their posthumous LP, Scubacide, […]

Bosko is a Los Angeles via Portland producer with a long work history alongside Cool Nutz and his Jus Family Records. He plays every instrument in the studio, and he kills it on the vocoder. His resume features work with E-40, Kanye West and Too Short among others. Bosko plays the Doug Fir Saturda alongside […]

When Justin Maurer, frontman for the ridiculously poppy but fast and destructive local punk band, Clorox Girls, got out of my van he said, “Hey, thanks man, it felt good to talk about all that. This was kind of like therapy!”
And it was. When Justin suggested I come get a preview of the Clorox Girls’ […]