How I love this Hurah Hurah track, let me count the ways. Literally:
First, the whole thing’s laden with bright, chiming glockenspiel (or, as the band’s MySpace lists it, glockenshpocken).
Second, Ezra Sandberg-Lewis’s loosey-goosey, melodramatic vocals remind me of Ricky Nelson (awesome!).
Third, his voice is accompanied at choice points throughout the song by sweet […]

You couldn’t buy your way into Taking Back Sunday’s Crystal Ballroom show last Thursday, no matter how hard you tried. With Crystal’s ticket booth closed, and Ticketmaster not taking calls, only fans with tickets given a month in advance got the chance to see an act that regularly sells out stadiums play in a mid-sized […]

Recently playing the Kenton Club stage with Plants and soon to be inhabiting the Towne Lounge next week with Rollerball, Ah Holly Fam’ly is quickly shedding their “new kids on the block status” (as the Merc lovingly put it less than a year ago). Joining the ranks of regular rotation here in PDX, the […]

Episode 5 of These Are The Days features artists performing at this year’s PDX Pop Now! festival which takes places August third through fifth at Audiocinema in SE Portland. From its humble origins on an e-mail listserv, PDX Pop Now! has become one of the most beloved music events in town. This episode also features […]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul is a WW news intern, whom we sent downtown to check out PDX POP NOW!’s second annual city hall show.] City Hall’s front porch turned into a mini-happening Wednesday, with three bands, a stage, and some fans going about their business pretty much ignored by rush-hour downtown Portland streaming past. No matter […]

It’s probably fair to say that not many Local Cut readers have noticed, but a little weekly thing called Band Name of the Week has been on hiatus for a bit, and I aim to stop that right now! (Seriously, though, sorry ’bout that. Things have been a wee bit hectic ’round the WW and […]

We sent WW photographer Justin Kent to the Menomena/Decemberists show at the Edgefield on Sunday, and he came back stoked. “Maybe a few too many,” he wrote. “But they just wouldn’t stop doing crazy stuff. It was a perfect example of what a homecoming show should be, full of crazy stage antics, extended guitar […]

Some indie band leaders like to boast about high-minded influences—evoking French pop music (in the case of the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt), Japanese folk tales (à la the Decemberists) or Harry Partch and Goethe (see the Books). But 29-year-old Michael Herrman, founder of local chamber-pop outfit Buoy LaRue, happily admits (without a whiff of irony) […]

[POST-JAZZ] With even the most outgoing band, there’s always a chance that things will change once the “record” button is pressed on an interviewer’s machine. But at the cluttered warehouse office of Marriage Records, no one in the Watery Graves batted an eye. Drummer Adrian Orange—fighting to stay awake after a flight home from one […]

[GARAGE-Y GRRRL ROCK] You know rock music’s gotten complicated when something classic-sounding strikes you as more innovative than something, well, truly innovative. But that’s exactly the reaction Phantom Lights’ new 10-inch, Chordae Tendinae, elicits, and its vinyl-only issuing only strengthens the sentiment. As exciting (and intriguing) as it is to hear a noise or experimental […]