7:45 pm, Slabtown: I’m sitting in the backroom, playing some pool, and hoping my stomach will stop blaming me for the night before when I start to hear music coming from the stage. Sure, it’s Musicfest, but I’m not prepared to rock until nine. Nevertheless, I make my way to the main room to check it out and I’m treated to half a song for sound check that blew me away. “Who are you guys? Are you from Portland?” It is, in fact, Leigh Marble and his band. They are indeed from Portland, and they are perfect. Though more show up by the time they actually begin, I am the only person within 50 feet of the stage. That doesn’t seem to matter to them—the band plays as if it’s a packed house. The set starts out as a nice slow and steady folk tapestry, which cuts out at exactly the right time only to suddenly get kicked up a notch, sending me into uncontrollable spasms that can’t quite be called dancing. Their song “Lucky Bastards”, is a some perfect mix of garage, country, and folk, and it’s amazing. The entire band is playing frenetically with controlled reckless abandon, and it feels like looking directly at the sun. IAN RASMUSSEN.

9:06 pm, Satyricon: White Rainbow is on stage with a water jug. He’s smiling and strumming his electric guitar. There are people in Satyricon, but space to move too. Outside, many of Portland’s music-making underage contingent are collected on the sidewalk alongside members of Deerhunter. NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

9:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom: My friend turns to me to say he can leave happy if he can hear at least two of his three favorite songs from New Zealand’s adorable indie rockers, the Brunettes. As if cued, they start into “B.A.B.Y.,” his first pick. My friend just smiles and starts to tap his feet. Someone on stage loves him. IAN RASMUSSEN.

9:18 pm, Roseland: Cool Kids still aren’t on.

9:20 pm, Crystal Ballroom: The Brunettes have been playing for about 10 minutes, and they’re damn near charming the pants everyone in the relatively sparse audience. They did appear a little annoyed before their set began, however, as Crystal sound folks/stage hands were doing some last-minute rearranging that, it seemed, the band either found unnecessary or knew was eating into its set time. Regardless, the Brunettes opened with a pretty stellar version of the oddball title track to its brand new Structure and Cosmetics and proceeded to charm with older faves like “The Record Store” and upbeat new tracks such as “Her Hairagami Set”—which frontguy/guitarist Jonathan Bree (who was looking as cool as ever with his rocker dude hair and Beatles-esque suit) claims is what happens when a New Zealand band tries to do something “epic.” Then, led by multi-instrumentalist/frontgal Heather Mansfield—who looked darling in a yellow baby-doll style dress with a big, red, waist-height bow—the band launched into “B.A.B.Y. (Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth),” an ironically uber-bubbly pop anthem complete with myriad band-geeky instruments (sax, trumpet, clarinet, wood blocks, etc.) and cheerleader-style, in-unison letter-spelling arm positions (think “YMCA”). Mansfield fully embodies the concept of “mulit-tasking,” playing bells, keys and clarinet, all while clapping along, joining in on the arm-signals and, yes, singing. This alone confirms my belief that the Brunettes are some sort of Stepford musicians: too perfect looking and sounding to be real humans. All is going swimmingly—until the band gets words that its set will be cut short. Bree is openly upset by the news, but Mansfield continues forth with what was presumably the original set-plan. She and crowd favorite trumpet-and-keys guy Harry Cundy lead a round of the name game (“Harry farry bo barry banana fanny…” you get the idea) while Bree sulks, appearing as if he’d rather be using the time to play an album cut. They man up anyway and follow the name game with an energetic, vibrant version of “Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks,”on which Bree breaks a string. He appears to be feeling like it just isn’t his night. Then the band’s told their set is over, and they’re openly bummed—as is the rest of the crowd. I can’t help but think it’s unfair to boot a band that came all the way from across the world on the eve of an album release off stage in favor of a comedian and, presumably, timeliness. It was great while it lasted—but it sure as hell didn’t last long enough. AMY MCCULLOUGH.

9:35 pm, Doug Fir: Fist Fite’s Jonnie Monroe has finished shouting into her telephone receiver/microphone and has made her way to the front of the stage at the Doug Fir. Breaking open a $1.49 plastic tube of glitter, she douses the audience at the front of the stage in it, then breaks out some Egyptian looking dance moves before returning to her spot behind her keyboard. NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

10 pm, Dante’s: Dante’s is such a strange venue for Loch Lomond, you might expect to see some heavy metal or country rock amidst their fire and hell theme, but not with Portland’s best old-world folk act. Not to worry—as soon as they begin to play, I’m washed away and could care less that the table behind me is on fire. About half way through the set, LL begin to play something that sounds like a sea-chanty, and the entire audience begins to sway back and forth and bob up and down in some quick approximation of either being on a boat or a musical about pirates. By the time the band closes with “Tic,” I don’t want them to ever get off the stage. Their records are amazing, and their live show is mind blowing. IAN RASMUSSEN.

10:03 pm, Crystal Ballroom: Eugene Mirman is onstage. The Thermals are all together in the back near the staircase watching from the crowd. I spit the two mints that were in my mouth onto the back of the person in front of me—an involuntary response to a very funny joke. He’s REALLY funny—now I know why Tokyo Police Club, who tend to roll with indie comedians (i.e. Aziz Ansari), are so in love with him. Later, Mirman shows a video about Massachusetts. As he interviews a college student about racism and then conducts a non-interview on an escalator, someone spits an entire mouth full of beer all over my back due to uncontrollable laughing. For this I can forgive him. NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

10:21 pm, The Fez: Oakland’s The Heavenly States start their set at the Fez Ballroom, sounding like the New Pornographers but without all the battling egos. Lead singer and guitarist Ted Nesseth mentions that the band is crashing somewhere near a street called “Mulletnomah,” comically mangling the name of NE Multnomah Street. “I had cousins in the ’80s who had Mulletnomah,” he says. “It’s cancer of the hair. But they’re better now.” The four-piece’s live performance is far more energetic than their studio recordings, but it was hard to appreciate the band’s melodies and harmonies since they were nearly indistinguishable. The Fez’s sound guy must have blown an eardrum or two standing next to speaker, because Genevieve Gagon’s back up vocals were way too low and Mark Christianson’s bass was muddled. Whatever the sound problems stemmed from, they ruined a perfectly good set. PAIGE RICHMOND.

10:36 pm, Satyricon: I make it to the door to find out YACHT has JUST finished his set. Boooo! I was hoping for four minutes of Yacht-tastic goodness. Come on now, this is the last time I can hear “The Summer Song” in its natural environment before September 23rd descends and it becomes autumn. Oh well, gossiping about the Gossip and their just canceled US tour commences. NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

10:47 pm, Roseland: Lifesavas perform their last song and exit the stage to massive applause. Someone comes back out, unfolds a banner which I assume had a statement of promotion across it, and I wonder, worried—is this an all hip-hop crowd? Is it a Girl Talk crowd? Will he have just a few scattered fans? NILINA MASON CAMPBELL.

11 pm, Roseland: Gregg Gillis (a.k.a. Girl Talk) takes to the stage to announce he won’t be performing on the stage due to the amount of expensive equipment on it. He instead performs inside the barrier between the crowd and stage. But within minutes there’s no barrier between Gillis and everyone else. This isn’t a concert, he says, it’s a party! He wishes a happy birthday to Bianca, then begins his set (with a copy of WW’s Finder beside his laptop). There is confetti throwing and clothing removal. Yes, as expected and as I described to my gig-going buddy for the evening, Girl Talk is ten times what Deacon was last night. They’re different, but he’s the closest reference in terms of crowd and interaction. NILINA MASON CAMPBELL.

11:13 pm, Roseland: Girl Talk is on stage [on the floor, technically. -Ed.] at the Roseland, but the venue has already reached capacity. There’s a line stretching down the block on NW 6th Avenue, and with only a wristband I doubt my chances of gaining entry. I head over to Berbati’s, hoping to get in before Okkervil River starts playing at 12:30. I overhear a guy in a backwards baseball cap talking on his cell phone. “Hey, are you in?” he asks whoever is on the other end of the call. “Yeah, it’s one-in, one-out, and there’s no way we’re getting in.” Since the line is eight people wide and he’s about 20 feet ahead of me, I bail on Berbati’s and reconsider my chances of seeing any more music tonight. PAIGE RICHMOND.

11:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom: The Helio Sequence has played one song, attempting to play another when something happened, I’m still not sure what, and the show comes to a grinding halt. Another five or ten minutes of stops and starts before the band launches into a song off its new album. It isn’t worth it. Granted, I’m in the balcony and not in the shit, but the band’s newest songs seem less than original and somewhat forced on stage. My disappointment with the show isn’t helped by the fact that the two guys behind me talk through out the entire performance, using a vocabulary made up almost entirely of hate speech. Helio Sequence closes with “Square Knots,” and it is just raucous and energetic enough to partially win me over again. IAN RASMUSSEN.

11:17 pm, Roseland: He’s playing Grizzly Bear’s “Knife”!! “I think it’s alright.” No sign of “Wamp Wamp.” NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

11:30 pm, Tube: The first words I hear sung out of Sexy Pants’ mouths are “With sexy power comes sexy responsibility,” followed by what I’m pretty sure is “If you’re only dancing with us for fun/ Then the terrorists have already won.” Shirts are torn, hearts are broken. CASEY JARMAN.

11:34 pm, Berbati’s Pan: Ex-Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle sits humbly onstage with only an acoustic guitar and a small keyboard, which sits amidst a bundle of cords on top of a cardboard Solo Cups box. In a sort of cute coincidence, Lytle mentions feeling funny about being a “solo guy” these days and calls himself a “quality intermission” between Damian Jurado and Okkervil River. He says other endearing things like “killer diller” in-between a decent rationing of Grandaddy tunes (notably, “El Caminos in the West,” “Jeez Louise” and “The Go in the Go-For-It”), a few solo cuts and the excellent, perfectly-suited-to-Lytle “I’m Not In Love” by 10CC (just imagine his tiny, familiar voice crooning the words, “Oooh, you wait a long time for me”). Awesome. Lytle, who always looks like he’s laughing at some inside joke and/or just on the verge of cracking a wide grin, sells himself way short with the “quality intermission” comment. Viva le Grandaddy! Er, viva le Grandaddy frontman! AMY MCCULLOUGH.

11:40 pm, Roseland: It doesn’t usually feel like a sauna at the bottom level of the Roseland, but tonight, curiously, it does. So I follow the beat of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” up the stairs. The scene is insane. Swaying, bouncing, bumping, grinding. This isn’t just a “sea of people,” as the music journalism cliche goes. This is an angry sea in a storm so wild that the norse god behind it was swallowed up amongst the waves that are crashing against the barrier of the stage. And that empty stage! Just confused-looking beefy security guards where cage dancers would make more sense. This is hands down the craziest crowd I’ve ever seen in Portland. And when the music finally stops, when Greg Gillis is pulled back on stage by security—adorned only in a pair of soaked sweatpants—and thanks the crowd for the “tightest crowd ever” or something along those lines, it’s familiar faces I see heading for the exits. People who I didn’t even know liked to dance. Chalk it up to both the magic of Girl Talk and the lameness of stages. CASEY JARMAN.

11:57 pm, Crystal Ballroom: The Thermals are putting giant wooden trees onto the stage at the Crystal Ballroom. Well, the Thermals and a few added companions, including drummer Lorin Coleman’s older and younger brothers, who seem to assist rather frequently in all things Thermals. The rest of his family is present too. NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

12:10 am, Roseland: Clipse are onstage wearing heavy jewelry and BAPE. They bring out an oldie—”What Happened to that Boy” for their third song of the night. I last saw them perform the song in 2004 when they opened for N*E*R*D at the Crystal. Visions of what was ahead of them at that time dance in my head—when Pharrell would still produce for them before he went to war with their label for holding back their album, ending all prospects of future collaboration. The audience they could’ve captured! NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

12:20 am, outside the Fez: Smoking a cigarette outside the Fez while the Prids are playing inside, I spot two man wearing only underwear just down the street from me. They’re standing outside Boxxes, a gay bar on SW Stark Street. I head over to them and ask if I can take their picture. They jump at the chance, asking if I want an ass-or a crotch-shot. One of them humps my leg and squeals, “We should just double-team her!” I tell them that I can’t take the picture if I’m in it, and they happily settle for an ass-shot instead. PAIGE RICHMOND.

Exactly 12:30 am, Berbati’s Pan: After 40 full mintues of set change action (Jason Lytle’s box, keyboard and guitar weren’t so much the issue as was Okkervil River’s gazillion strings, keys and mics), Okkervil River takes the stage and launches right into pop-plaything “Plus Ones,” which seems especially apt considering Question Mark and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” just played as one of the between-sets house songs (the Okkervil River tune toys with plenty of numeral-based pop songs—”99 Luftballons,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” etc.—but it specifically starts with the line, “No one wants to hear about your 97th tear…”). I expected them to start with “Unless It’s Kicks,” which is saved for much later in the Austin band’s balls-to-the-wall rock set. It’s always a weird feeling when you realize that lots of people suddenly care about a band you love. I often make the mistake of thinking everyone must love the things that I think are great because, well, I think they’re great, but my adoration for the Brunettes didn’t make for a sold-out Crystal Ballroom and I still regularly sing the praises of Davy vonBohlen (the Promise Ring/Vermont/Maritime) to blank faces. It’s hard to know what’s really going on outside of your own enthusiasm sometimes, so it was an awesome feeling to see an audience in Portland—a town that’s pretty notorious for bad crowds: chatty, uninterested, bored, seated, unmoving, uncheering—absolutely lose its shit over one of my favorite bands. And the band completely feeds off our energy, playing everything from the epic, melancholic “So Come Back, I am Waiting” and oldies like “Lady Liberty” to somber and rollicking new tunes (”A Girl in Port” and “Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe,” respectively) with bombast, pride and an unbridled attitude of fun—which is exactly what leadman Will Sheff has said was his goal when writing and recording new album The Stage Names. It shows. The band looks invigorated, and—though Sheff and most of the gang are sporting nicer looking suits than I remember them donning in past shows—four of the six of ‘em are down to sweat-drenched t-shirts, broad smiles and dampened hair by the end of the set (Sheff is sporting the same Dog Boggs tee I’ve seen him strip down to at any and every Okkervil River performance I’ve ever seen, which I think number six at this point). Any reservations fans might have about the new record (mine included) are washed away by live versions of its songs (so much so that listening to it today was a little disappointing in comparison), and the band’s post-recording musicianship shines through on tracks new and old; guitarist Brian Cassidy, in particular, absolutely tears it up on damn near everything (most notably “For Real” and “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene”), playing melodic, intricate leads on a grizzly, distorted electric that’s tone is perfectly in tune with and complementary to the rest of the band’s sound. As if that’s not enough, he rips out a tight-fingered, intricate solo on mandolin-led “Westfall,” too, which serves as the second-to-last song before encore-closer “Okkervil River Song” (predictably but awesomely, the band finished its set proper with The Stage Names closer “John Allyn Smith Sails”). The crowd is explosive throughout: It positively roars after the abrupt end to “For Real”; it keeps quiet during “The President’s Dead”; it hollers and screams for more (a surprisingly rare thing in Portland) when the band first leaves the stage. It is indescribable. Everyone is painfully hot and exhausted—and enthralled and bewildered and thoroughly rocked. We burst into a group sing-along during “Okkervil River Song,” belting out “I searched and stared/ But only the river stared bah-ah-ack!” over and over until the band kills it. Even bass player Patrick Pestorius has a hard time letting go, reappearing on the stage to throw set lists written on paper plates and bottled water to eager fans. The overheated crowd pours out onto Ankeny and 3rd. I run across the street with glea just to cool off—and to celebrate. AMY MCCULLOUGH.

1:20 am, Ash Street Saloon: Obituaries frontwoman Monica Nelson, who just took a long slurp from a bottle of cough syrup (the same stuff that’s dripping from the corners of her mouth) is standing completely still and staring ghoulishly at a button-down business type towards the back of the half-capacity room. The square is dancing rubber-bodied, smiling bright at Nelson all the while. “Why don’t you come over here and make fun of me,” Nelson asks. Oh man, this is gonna be good. The drunk square points at his question mark face and continues his cartoon dance before obliging her, cutting through punks and rockers half his age to wind up near her feet. This catches Nelson—all surped up with nowhere to go—off-guard, but her eyes trace the dude’s movement and you can see gears turning. She’s gonna destroy him. “Aren’t you the guy who does my taxes?” she asks him mid-song with a hint of a chuckle. He laughs and turns back to his pack of lonely-looking friends, then prepares for the second half of her assault—a stage-dive tackle or a chucked half-empty cough syrup bottle. “Hey, that’s the guy that does my taxes,” Nelson feebly jokes a second time before adding, with a forced smile, “as long as you’re having a good time.” What? That’s it? The room’s bloodlust fades and queer-bashing assholes in highschools everywhere let out grunts of smug satisfaction. Punk—seen here with eyes cut and lips bloodied, grasping for the ropes just to catch its breath—takes another punishing blow. CASEY JARMAN.

1:20 am, Doug Fir: Deerhunter is asking for more vocals in the monitors. The group is minus guitarist Colin Mee who quit last week because doing Musicfest NW didn’t vibe with his schedule (among a few other things that involve poop and eBay). NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

1:25 am, Ash Street Saloon: Portland Punk legends The Obituaries are playing the Ash street and things couldn’t be more rowdy. Singer Monica Nelson growls deeply into the mike before belting out a powerful high note. Despite the power she is projecting back, she still looks shy and confused on stage, as if she is either counting the beats or is high. My friends points at the two empty couch syrup bottles sitting in front of her and the answer is obvious. The only thing left to do is pump my fists in the air. IAN RASMUSSEN.

1:27 am, Doug Fir: I notice Fist Fite’s glitter still decorates the stage that Deerhunter are now on—two members rocking new Nike’s they picked up at their show with Grizzly Bear the day before. I was so ready to gaze in jealousy at Bradford Cox’s selected dress for the evening, but he disappoints by wearing trousers. Just because playing guitar now restricts your onstage antics doesn’t mean your fashion has to suffer! Somehow I hold myself back from yelling this at him. Instead others around me yell “Fuck yeah!” NILINA MASON-CAMPBELL.

3 am, Audiocinema: Hutch and Kathy from the Thermals are doing insanely cute dances while Beyonda spins. But what I really want to see is the Arrested Development-style chicken dances they did in the “Pillar of Salt” video. I’m too big a Thermals fan to introduce myself and/or state my request. CASEY JARMAN.

Heavenly States/Underwear dudes photos by Paige Richmond. Other shots by Nilina Mason-Campbell.