Welcome the sexxxy Panther duo back to the USofA tonight, as they rock Backspace (along with Copy and DJ Hostile Tapeover). The dudes just returned from a tour of Japan (the above photo is proof of that), and after the show they will make the audience sit Indian style on the floor in a semicircle as they regale everyone with tales about all the crazy shit you can get from vending machines. God, I love Japan.

MP3:
Panther - Diamonds, Violence (E*Rock Remix)

Alright. So it’s Friday afternoon and hot as a motherfucker out. But maybe you’re still stuck at work. Hopefully there’s air conditioning. And hey, if you are in front of the damn computer screen, at least you’re not missing out on soaking up some Vitamin D on a patio somewhere with a cocktail in your hand—it’s fucking grey out. So what. Whatever.
For those of you counting down those last few minutes of the work week, I’ve got a sweet little time-waster for you. Because, let’s face it—by Friday afternoon you’ve exhausted all the websites you read, passing time on the company dollar. Here’s a sweet little sonnofabitch that oughta be good for a few more minutes:

http://www.spiritualizedharmonies.com/

It’s got a bunch of Spirtualized videos, past and present, to promote the new album and tour—a tour which aint coming to Portland, goddamnit. But this site is a whole lot better than the usual promotional schlock. Motherfucker is high-tech and high-fi—so much so it choked my poor G4 to death in full-screen mode. But it’s a pretty thing. And while were on the topic, Spirtualized’s sustained graphic motif’s throughout the years are pretty admirable as well.

Anyway, if you’re watching the clock, I hope this’ll help jump those little hands forward. Salud.

According to Billboard local pop-stars the Shins are bailing on the good ship Sub Pop and will be releasing album number four on singer James Mercer’s Aural Apothecary label. Hey, let’s hear what their manager has to say about this:

“The deal will be more of a [pressing and distribution] deal than a traditional record deal,” Shins manager Ian Montone tells Billboard. “That partner could very well remain Sub Pop, who have done a remarkable job with the band and have a great staff of people who really love music. It could be a digital partner with respect to other rights. All of this is being determined. The first goal is to make the record and see where that takes us.”

Oh, so it could still be Sub Pop. I see. I wonder if their manager has more to say about such a deal?

“it allows them to have the best of all possible worlds — control and ownership, as well as the ability to still partner with a label and be able to take advantage of that traditional infrastructure,” according to Montone.

Now that sounds like major label talk to me. Whatever. As long as this keeps the band’s drummer, Jesse Sandoval, in the studio and off the softball field for Team Disjecta, the Mercury (and their respective softball team that just so happens to always lose to Sandoval’s team) supports this decision.

I haven’t played any sort of musical instrument since I was forced to haltingly learn the rudiments of the recorder in like fourth grade, and I am resolutely, pathetically tone deaf—which means if you probably shoudn’t ever invite me somewhere if you plan on having a jam session, or even if you’re just planning on singing “Happy Birthday” to somebody you don’t loathe. All the same, I ended up at Weezer’s “Hootenanny” last night, at the Oaks Park Dance Pavilion of all places—an event that was more or less a combination between a secret show and what I imagine it felt like to be a marching band nerd in high school.

Elementary school is probably the better comparison, actually, as long as you imagine your favorite music teacher is Mr. Cuomo. 94.7 sponsored the show—one of a series of such hootenannies that Weezer’s traveling around and putting on to mark the release of their latest album—and the basic idea is this: A local radio station invites like 200 people out, who are told to bring whatever instrument(s) they play, and, beforehand, to learn the basics of the songs that make up the setlist. In Portland’s case: The 200 or so people were invited by 94.7, and they brought instruments that ranged from plastic kazoos to a drum that was the approximate size and shape of semi-truck’s wheel. Also: trombones, guitars, trumpets, violins, cellos, tambourines, maracas, clarinets, those drums hippies like, tubas, and those egg-shaped shaker things that don’t even really count as instruments. And then Weezer played six songs, and everybody played and sang and hummed along, and it was one of the most fun shows I’ve been to in a really long time.

Fact! Rivers Cuomo looks tiny and kind of shifty in person. Maybe it's that mustache, but more likely, it's that in a space as small as the pavilion at Oaks Park, and with only a few hundred people sitting cross-legged on the floor immediately around the band, what happens is what usually happens when you're in the immediate vicinity of somebody who, up until now, you've only seen on beloved album covers from your youth or in photos from Rolling Stone profiles: The figure in question look smaller than they should, and remarkably average, and it takes you a second to even recognize who they are. I guess in this instance, it helped that Cuomo was wearing a baseball cap with the Weezer "W" on it, and a Weezer windbreaker, and a Weezer t-shirt.

Speaking of that album cover, my somewhat tortured history w/ Weezer: The Blue Album is fuck, holy shit, Blue Album, right? Constant and continuous rotation in my room c. 1994-1997, all of it memorized with care. Pinkerton discovered later, being the album that, as anyone with half a wit about them will readily, quickly, and excitedly acknowledge as the band's apex. For the next couple of years, the band gave me what was to become my favorite conversation starter: "So whatever happened to Weezer?" And everyone would nod and agree and say how good Pinkerton was, and yeah, whatever did happen to Weezer, and this was an extraordinarily good and accurate test to use in determining if this girl named Mariah you were talking to at a house party near the University of Utah was worth continuing to talk to while your buddy Dave drank an entire bottle of vodka and then passed out on a purple inflatable chair, the squeaking noises made by the chair providing aural punctuation to the conversation about how fantastic "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" is. And then, years later, an answer came to the question, nullifying my conversation-starting query: The Green Album, is no Pinkerton, true, but I will not talk shit about like everyone else does, because I'm pretty sure it's a perfectly fine summer album, bright and quick and poppy and fun and catchy, and then there's Maladroit, which I sort of remember halfheartedly listening to three or four times and then never listening to again, and then Make Believe, an album so terrible that it reminds me why illegally downloading music seems like such, such, such a legit option when the alternative is going into Everyday Music and spending $17 to learn that a band you once listened to on "repeat all" in your room is now, by all appearances, lazy and lousy and bland.

I haven't heard their new album yet, w/ the exception of the single "Pork and Beans," and I don't think I would have bothered with it, frankly, if it wasn't for the hootenanny last night, which was so genuinely great that it made me remember why I used to love the band so much in the first place.

On entering the pavilion, everyone gets a booklet autographed by Rivers Cuomo, Brian Bell, and Scott Shriner (Patrick Wilson, pulling a Greg Oden, isn't around thanks to a knee injury). Inside are lyrics to the setlist: "Pork and Beans," "Island in the Sun," Radiohead's "Creep," "Say It Ain't So," "El Scorcho," "Beverly Hills," and, in addition to the lyrics on these Xeroxed pages, there are hand-scrawled notes in the margins, written in some sort of bewildering and frightening foreign language: "In the key of F# minor (after tuning town 1/2 step)," says the one for "Island in the Sun," while "Creep" is annotated with "Chord progression: G major - B major - C major - C minor." I ignore this bizarre stuff, and contented myself with singing, because I know four of those six songs by heart. I probably should not admit how much I enjoy singing "Hip hip!" during "Island in the Sun." But fuck it: "Hip hip!" is fun to sing, and "Pork and Beans" is really fun to hum along to, and yes, "Beverly Hills" is a terrible fucking song, but it's still a great song to stomp your feet along to, provided, I guess, that it's Rivers Cuomo telling you to do the stomping, and there are 200 other people, aged 11 to 40, all around you, equally excited about doing the same thing.

"Just do that twice, and we're golden," Cuomo tells the nervous-looking girl playing clarinet as she preps for her solo for "Island in the Sun," and throughout, he acts not like a rock star but more like like a director/conductor/producer, telling everybody what to do and consulting with the sound engineer, who's backed up w/ all his equipment up against a wall, listening in: Mics are hung from the the ceiling, and one boom mike sits in the middle of the room, for soloists like Nervous Clarinet Girl, and Trumpet Kid, and Guy with Huge Casio Keyboard. Recording is in process, and we have to do "Pork and Beans" twice, and certain segments a couple of times--the audio to be broadcast on 94.7, we're told, along with on a CD assembled from these hootenanny sessions, one I assume/hope will be like that really solid The Lion and the Witch live EP that Weezer put out right after I moved to Portland. "The Phoenix people were singin' a lot louder," the engineer guy says at one point, egging everybody on. "I really like what you're doin'," Cuomo tells the percussion section, AKA the drum kids in the back, at least one of whom has some truly impressive headbanging hair. Three girls sit in front of me, maybe 11 or 12 or 13, and they keep holding up their hands and laughing and and doing that thing where you make a "W" shape w/ your thumb and forefingers, and they giggle and look at each other in nervous excitement after hearing everybody sing "the F-word" in "Creep." Everybody cheers after each of the songs, looking up to Cuomo and the engineer for approval, but the general sense of things, for the hour, hour and a half that it lasts, is that everybody's just having a really good time.

"I think these people now have a pretty good sense of what it's like to be in Weezer," Cuomo says as preparations are being made to start in on "El Scorcho," with Brian Bell telling everyone to sing "Death Cab" instead of "Green Day" in the lyrics. Cuomo's statement, is, of course, pretty full of shit; even in a totally low-key and chill environment like this, there's a clear separation between the people who are here because they are in the band and the people who are here to listen and gawk. Even though this feels more like a jam session than anything else, it's still a show, albeit one where, when you look out through the windows, you can see amusement park rides spinning and flashing just outside.

But it's something more, too, and I'm not sure what, but I like it. Once you get past the music, an essential part of any great concert is that fleeting thrill of sharing space and noise and purpose with artists you like. Yeah, no matter how great or involving a show, the audience is never really going to feel like the band does, or know anything what it's like to be in the band--but when everything's going right, and the lines start to blur a bit, they can get pretty close. That usually only lasts for a few, brief seconds--when there's a shared intent, or a mutual recognition--and then it's done. But last night, in some weird old building at Oaks Park, that feeling lasted a whole lot longer, with a couple of hundred people having a blast on a warm summer night, stomping their feet and humming and making music.

JESUS, YOU WANT MORE? Dave Allen has some video of the show over at Pampelmoose, here and here.

Photos courtesy of Minh Tran.

MON MARIE, THE CROSSWALKS, THE RAINY STATES
(Towne Lounge, 714 SW 20th Pl) Mon Marie migrated from Michigan to Washington, bringing with them swooning, melodramatic love songs whose wussiness is undermined by the off-kilter elements in their symphonic lo-fi production. Fuzz bass, mysterious whispery vocals, and generous dollops of echo make their swinging-for-the-fences emo melodicism sound invitingly weird rather than embarrassingly cheesy. Let’s hope they continue to write tunes that would make Brian Wilson jealous, and let’s hope they never see the inside of a real studio. Meanwhile, unlike Mon Marie, the Crosswalks could probably never make the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack even if they tried; instead they play simple, upbeat pop ’n’ roll that greets you with a big smile, slaps you on the back, and hands you a beer fresh out of the cooler. NED LANNAMANN

MP3:
Mon Marie - Transient Night

Happy birthday Brian Wilson, you are 66 years old today. For your big day I promise to get you something nice, perhaps I’ll smother Mike Love with a pillow, or just make you some cookies or something.

MP3:
The Beach Boys - Caroline No

Poor Caroline, forever captured in time as the cruel girl who broke his fragile heart. And if you want your daily dose of mortality, those barking dogs at the end of the song, they’re dead. Life sucks. But know what doesn’t suck? This video…

SANTOTZIN, KRAZY KRACE, QWEL, DIRTY DIGITAL, SLEEP, DJ ATM, DJ SPARK

(Berbati’s Pan, 10 SW 3rd) Oh shit. Qwel’s coming to town? Seemingly buried in the middle of this bill, this backpacker-approved emcee is primarily known for not being known, an overlooked sensation whose excellence comes in both his rapid-fire flow and his ability to cram so many lyrical gems in the frame of a single song. While his hyper flow has the pace to veer slightly towards the territory of fellow Chicagoan Twista, Qwel utilizes plenty of restraint in reeling in the tempo and focusing on content and delivery. “Saved,” from 2006’s Freezerburner, is a perfect example of that, a delicate beat capped by some sprawling guitar and the emcee’s passionate—if not emotive—flow. He’s just dropped a new album alongside Kip Killagain entitled The New Wine, and while I have yet to come across a copy, if the past is any indication, I expect greatness. EAC

MP3:
Qwel - New Wine Promo Mix (featuring Kip Killagain)

We like Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet quite a bit ‘round these parts. In fact, we even ran an article about the group this week. But it’s a little odd that the band, and their fellow tourmates on the Nylon Summer Music Tour 2008, have not caught on to a larger audience:

Please note this show has been moved from Crystal Ballroom to Hawthorne Theatre. All Crystal tickets will be honored.

I assume this was due to poor advance ticket sales. Unless someone really doesn’t like Ringlers’ onion rings or something. Anyway, the tour’s lineup (which in addition to BYOP features She Wants Revenge, The Virgins, and Switches) is made up entirely of major label bands, all of which have generated a ton of ink over the past year or so. That’s not a good sign when four bands with such backing can’t fill a room like the Crystal. Here’s hoping that this lack of interest has more to do with the godawful faux-goth headliners, She Wants Revenge, than with a band like Be Your Own Pet.

I talked with Frightened Rabbit guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Scott Hutchison over the phone in preparation for the article that appears in this week’s paper. Despite my calling him at an inconvenient time, he was friendly and informative and provided all his answers in a charming Scottish brogue. This was not weird at all, because he is indeed Scottish. Here’s the rest of my interview with Scott.

Frightened Rabbit play TONIGHT at Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, 9 pm, $10

NED: So you recorded The Midnight Organ Fight in Bridgeport, Connecticut?

SCOTT: Yeah, yeah, we did.

That’s actually not far from where I grew up; I’m very familiar with Bridgeport. I’m at the other end of the country now, but…um… WHY did you decide to record there?

Bridgeport is where the producer is based. His name is Peter Katis. He’s like a good friend of the label manager, of Fat Cat in the US. Also, he’s like got a great studio up there. He has worked with Interpol and the National up there. So it was the choice of producer rather than town. He lives there because it’s cheap to live there and we went there because of him. There’s absolutely nothing to do in Bridgeport, Connecticut so it’s a great place to get some work done.

I can’t imagine there’s much to do other than record an album.

Yeah. It was a pretty concerted effort. No distractions.

Right, and I gather it was recorded really quickly—two weeks. Was it written really quickly, also?

Yeah, a large portion of it was kind of written over the space of three weeks or so. I just kind of holed myself up in the studio and demoed it out. Some of ’em are a little older, but most of them are written at a certain time, about a certain time, so it’s all been kind of done in blocks so as to hopefully gain a kind of consistency about the whole thing.

Is that the way you typically write?

Absolutely. I don’t write every day. I haven’t honestly written a song for a little while. And I don’t really feel the need to write every day, but I really enjoy looking back on periods of time and trying to make sense of those rather than making sense of the present. You kind of get a more—I don’t know, this maybe sounds wanky to you—like, cinematic kind of viewpoint where you can tell a story from start to finish rather than be in the middle of a story. I think that’s the way I like to write, definitely.

Not a concept album, but a unified…

It’s not a concept album. I think it’s definitely about a period in time, but that’s just how it turned out. I didn’t contrive that.

I remember on the first album, Sing the Greys, which was one of my absolute favorites, there were short little interludes between some of the songs, which were reworks or remixes of other songs, and there’s some of that on this one, too.

Yeah, there is. I wanted to keep that. I dunno. In time, I wanted to be able to… this record was done quickly because we didn’t have a large budget. In time, if I had more time to work at it, I’d like to create a whole album, like one... Not a continuous piece, but definitely a gapless kind of album, and that’s kind of me stepping towards doing that. One of my favorite albums is the first Badly Drawn Boy album, Hour of Bewilderbeast. I don’t think there’s any stops in that and there’s a really nice theme-and-variation thing going on that he always does, and I definitely kind of aim and aspire to that.

In addition to Badly Drawn Boy, what are some of your other influences?

I always say the Band, I always say TV on the Radio, definitely. I guess, like, Scottish music such as the Twilight Sad or Idlewild is definitely an influence, too, from my kind of younger years. And I suppose there’s a whole bunch of grunge in there from when I was 15 that I can’t get rid of, and I think it peeks out every so often.

I thought the new record has kind of a country sound on some of the songs.

I’m a huge fan of Laura Cantrell, Ryan Adams, kind of Americana, like one of my favorite bands of all time is Wilco, so, you know… There’s a country feel to a lot of Scottish music as well, I think, to the point where in Glasgow there’s a place called the Grand Ole Opry where they like to put on a kind of Southern-American themed show every so often and stuff. It’s pretty big. Line dancing is huge in Scotland as well, not that I take part in that. Yeah, you’re right to say there’s country in there. Country music is always what I turned to when I was kind of sad. It’s kind of a sad record as well, so country seemed right.

Does any of that come from coming over to America and playing shows for the first time?

No, I’d just been listening to American music so much before I came over, so I don’t know if it’s… You don’t have to go to America to see it. I’ve been watching movies for years and it’s like you can definitely get that feel. And honestly coming over, a lot of it really does feel like I expected it to, you know, the long roads and kind of open skies and things. It’s kind of romantic but it totally exists.

We have a similar romantic notion about Scotland, too.

Oh cool! No, it’s a shithole!

We just listen to those Belle and Sebastian records and it all sounds very pleasant.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah…

How long have you and [your brother] Grant been playing together?

We hadn’t even played together even though we grew up together. He played drums in a completely separate room to the room that I played guitar in, and we never really thought about playing together ’til we were, like… ’til I was, like, 20. And that’s when we started, which was, like, six years ago now. So, yeah, we’ve been playing sort of together for that amount of time, but I never, you know… No, we were kind of into different things and it’s really hard when he’s such a large drummer that I never really wanted to play in the same space as him until we had a slightly larger practice room, because it would be, it was just so painful. He’s ridiculous.

Do you find that there’s a lot of communicating that’s done automatically, on a musical level?

I have to say, yeah, definitely. I mean, I’ve been told, I’m not so much aware of it usually myself, but I’ve definitely been told by the people that come see us live, that because we play as a two-piece, and we’re brothers, there’s a kind of telepathy. You know, it sounds boring technical talk, but he kind of asks for, like, the thing that he plays off is my guitar and the thing that I play off is his, kind of, kick. So, still, even though there’s a full band setup, it’s a lot about the two of us, and the way we kind of put things together rhythmically, yeah.

I saw you open for Pinback in October of ’07 [at the Roseland], which I thought was a weird pairing, since your music is so spontaneous and heartfelt, while Pinback is cold and slick and calculated. I mean, they came out on stage and spent 10 minutes dicking around with their Pro-Tools settings before even playing a note. And the music they play is so shitty and boring. [Ned proceeds to trash-talk Scott’s former tourmates. Scott listens politely.]

[diplomatically] Their audiences are great. That worked out kind of nice for us.

And your music is so emotional, the total opposite of that. Anyway, you’re doing more shows on your own, and you played South by Southwest…

Yeah, I mean, obviously, even by South by Southwest, the album had certainly found its way into a few hands in the record industry. Our record still wasn’t out, but there were people who knew the songs who had sort of grown to love the band. Yeah, the response has been quite, I don’t know… Whereas last time around we were turning heads a little bit, and people were going, “Oh, well, who the fuck are these guys?” Now it’s like, “I know who these guys are,” and there’s a more fervent atmosphere at our shows, hopefully. We’re finding that here in the UK as well. People just know about us now, which is great.

You’ve got a pretty memorable name.

True enough! Yeah, that’s part of it.

My mom really gets a kick out of the name Frightened Rabbit. [Ned proceeds to talk to Scott about his mother. Scott listens politely.] Does the success of the band surprise you? On a lyrical level, the songs are pretty dark and personal.

Yeah, but people are… I think a lot of people are dark. That kind of shit happens all over the place. They’re personal but, like I say, I hopefully put kind of enough of a—I don’t know—an overview on the whole story that people can kind of dip into it and take from it, rather than it being about specifics, it’s more about how the way that things feel, I guess. And hopefully, I’ve always tried to externalize it so it doesn’t become like a masturbation project, you know? So other people can relate. And I think that’s the most important thing. I’ve always tried to not go way too far in, although they’re personal, and there’s kind of emotive language at use, I don’t get too detailed.

Having said that, you mentioned the songs on the record were about a particular place in time. What was going on then?

Well, I was breaking up with someone. Or they were breaking up with me. I can’t really remember which. The whole, you know… kind of, to and fro. You know, this old, like, you really want to move on, but then you see them again and you go back, and it’s just like no, that’s not healthy, and it’s about the kind of whole thing actually feeling like a disease that you have to get rid of. You know, this hugely long, important and really wonderful relationship that was coming to an end. And I think it’s right, to give it its place in the whole record, because it was a really important part of my life.

Another week, another Mercury music section to read while you curse Japan for having the world’s greatest vending machines.

Au goes pop. Well, sort of. It’s experimental pop music and it is quite excellent. Way better than that experimental funk-metal record I made that no one bought.
MP3:
Au - rr vs. d

Journey to the land of Blue Giant. And unlike a certain other colored giant, this supergroup (with members of Viva Voce, Golden Bears, and Swords Project) doesn’t care if you eat your damn veggies or not.
MP3:
Blue Giant - Blue Sunshine

You like your Scots depressed? Hey, who doesn’t? Well then Frightened Rabbits are for you. Besides, if you had to eat haggis all day and listen to the Bay City Rollers every S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night, you’d be bummed too.
MP3:
Frightened Rabbit - Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

Be Your Own Pet will cure all your neurotic ways. So that means you can now sell me all your unused medication. Oh, do you have any Demerol? I love those.
MP3:
Be Your Own Pet - Becky

If I had a dollar for every time in the past few months that I’ve used the words “new”, “Frightened Rabbit”, and “fucking incredible” in the same sentence, I’d be moderately wealthy by now.

Seriously. This is no exaggeration. The Midnight Organ Fight, the new one from Frightened Rabbit, is so amazingly good that it is somewhat scary. The song posted above, “Heads Roll Off”, is probably the weakest thing on the record, and it still slays.

Reference points are a little hard to nail down, but the band sounds somewhere between The Twilight Sad, The National, and U2. The songs are epic anthems, mid-tempo barn burners that perfectly blend pop with damaged, heart-on-sleeve lyrics. They never get sappy though, which is harder than it sounds since they throw out lines like “I’m armed with the past and a will and a brick/I might not want you back, but I want to kill him.” Singer Scott Hutchison scrawls his way through the tracks with his thick Scottish accent and confessional lyrics, while his brother, Grant Hutchison, holds the entire thing together with some of the finest drumming in recent memory.

Really, I cannot say enough good things about this band. The Midnight Organ Fight is on my shortlist for record of the year, without a doubt, and chances are if you ask me for a music recommendation, this is what you’ll get.

Do not miss this show. Period.

Wow. This commercial for Buzz Cuts—“the 30 biggest and best alternative rock hits of all time on two awesome CDs”—is totally extreme. It’s like the Poochie the Dog of K-Tel commercials. Or skydiving with a snowboard on while you crack open a Mountain Dew. And a Suuuurrrrrge.

While this might be a soft target for goofing on the failing music industry, I have to give them credit for including every single thing that was ever wrong with alternative music and accurately compiling it on two CDs. What, no Hoobastank?

Oh, sorry, they are track 9.

You can’t get enough of the buzz!

Mercury favorite—and not-so-favorite—Girl Talk has just unleashed his new album Feed the Animals under the pay-whatever-you-want system made popular by Radiohead.

You can download it for free (320 kbps MP3s), pay $5 for the fancy FLAC files, and if your pockets are deep you can drop $13 (this includes shipping) for the bigger files and a copy of the disc that will be shipped to you when its “properly” released in September.

I spent $13. Even if I am not totally sold on his live show, Night Ripper has given me years of quality entertainment and I’m anxious to hear if he can capture that magic once again. If you downloaded it, let us know how much you paid (if anything), and why.

Photo not from last night, although singer Jack Barnett WAS wearing the same outfit

These New Puritans @ Doug Fir, 6/17/08

When we showed up at the Doug Fir last night the ticket office was closed and at the top of the stairs, nobody was stamping hands. Shit, I thought—show’s canceled. Or maybe we missed it. Neither, it turned it.

The show just wasn’t selling tickets. These New Puritans would play, and they’d do it for free. Somebody said something about really brisk door sales and almost nothing in advance… A damn shame. These kids—and I mean kids—are on to something. But indeed they are a very new band from half-a-world away (they’re from the UK)… So I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that the show undersold.

Puritan’s turned heads at this year’s SXSW, and that’s about it. The album, Beat Pyramid came out pretty recently. It’s a minor chord, angular, minimal, post-punk affair—not exactly the rage at the moment. But still, it’s good stuff.

There were maybe 30 people in the Doug Fir downstairs. Maybe a quarter of them standing. The Puritans took stage and you could tell they weren’t exactly buttressed by the clubs energy. Their age is striking. They look like high school kids. God knows, they might be. I wondered what it might look like if singer Jack Barnett got hit on by groupies — it would look wrong. Dude looks like he doesn’t even have armpit hair, much less own a razor (ok, and also he looks sort of a like a brown-haired, even younger version of Mercury Film Editor Erik Henriksen). They are all that age and build. Almost too innocent to be doing this sort of paranoid, cryptic post-punk thing.

But here they were, and damn if they didn’t do it well. The band, which sounds quite electric and synthesized on record but more organic live, was tight as chain-link fence. They didn’t waste notes. Ever. The drummer George, Jack’s twin, was something—fast, sharp and precise. Supposedly a wild performer, Jack didn’t really break out of his skin like I was hoping for, but again, you couldn’t blame him. Opening up the show for free seemed like a nice enough gesture.

The Puritans didn’t play a long set that night, and well they shouldn’t have. The energy, or numbers, just weren’t there. But then again, the somewhat abrasive, minor-chord slices aren’t an all night affair under any circumstances. Still, we stood there, legs cocking to the beat. In the right space, however—a packed, sweaty, club swirling with drink—it’s easy to see how These New Puritans could lead some amazing, cathartic, tribal dance party.

When I hear about “German Love,” I immediately think about Hasselhoff fetishes, those sexy scenes in Das Boot, and my German safe word (“Uwe Ochsenknecht”).

But when local band Starfucker—posing above with a Celtics-colored basketball in loving tribute to the long struggle of NBA champion Brian Scalabrine—sings about “German Love,” things are far less creepy. In fact, this breezy little song (the first preview from their upcoming self-titled full-length due out in September from the good folks at Bad Man) nicely captures why this band is all the rage these days.

MP3:
Starfucker - German Love

Photo by Ingrid Renan

Yesterday, an unfortunate message appeared on the MySpace blog of Charleston, SC band The Explorers Club:

As it so happens, misfortune has struck The Explorers Club. Just outside of Forsyth Montana (which is in the middle of nowhere) our big green monster of a van came head to head with a 250 pound deer… We are now stranded in Forsyth, waiting to hear from the mechanic tomorrow on what the damage is going to be. Needless to say this puts us in quite a hole. We’re not going to be able to make the Seattle or Portland shows, but will do our best to catch back up in San Francisco if we can get repaired in time… A Paypal Donate button has been added to our page as well… Love you all, we’ll hopefully be back on the road soon!

Well, as fate would have it, good luck intervened and the Explorers Club have bounced back! (I wish I could report the same for the deer.) I just spoke with multi-instrumentalist Dave Ellis on the phone, who told me: “It was the damnedest thing. These mechanics in Forsyth, Montana were able to get us a new radiator, so we’re back on the road. We’re at the Doug Fir right now. We missed the Seattle show, but we are GO for tonight.”

MP3:
The Explorers Club - Do You Love Me?

As you can hear above, the Explorers Club make sunny, vocal-harmony-drenched pop songs that sound very much like another band… whose name I can’t place right now… you know, one of the quintessential American bands of the ’60s… the Surf Kids? or something? The Sand Lads? At any rate, thankfully it takes more than a deer to the radiator to keep the Explorers Club down, but after mechanics’ expenses and hotel rooms, they could still use any extra cash. They’ve set up a Paypal donate button on their MySpace page, so if you’re feeling generous, you can click to help them out. OR you can go to the show tonight and buy lots of merch!

The Explorers Club open for Lightspeed Champion and Flowers Forever tonight at the Doug Fir; 830 E Burnside, 9 pm, $12

The latest issue of Paste (which you can read online via this handy magazine-style web format thingy) has named Portland’s Music Millennium as one of “America’s Finest” record stores. Hot damn!

Well, that’s not news to us. It’s also not news that they call MM owner Terry Currier a “Weird Al doppleganger,” which I assume they meant as a compliment. Anyway, MM joins the ranks of Amoeba, the unfortunately-named Electric Fetus, and a few more select stores, as the best-of-the-best record shops around. Congrats.

When The Organ released Grab That Gun in 2004, I disliked them. Not to say that I thought they were bad, necessarily. I just didn’t enjoy that record, and thought it was incredibly over-hyped.

I was an idiot in 2004.

Grab That Gun is a brilliant record, one that I find myself putting on again and again, and enjoying more and more with each listen. Of all the retro new-wave that flooded the indie scene in the early part of this decade, The Organ stand heads above most everyone. Sadly, they called it quits in 2006, and, like all tragic love stories, I didn’t know what I had till it was gone.

Well, the band is back! Sort of. I guess. They are releasing a six song EP via Mint Records, entitled Thieves, that is comprised of tracks that were supposed to be on their follow-up record that eventually got scrapped. However, not content to release the songs as demo-versions or whatever they were, the band got back together in the studio last year to rerecord the tracks just for this EP.

So that means they kind of reunited, right? That means a tour can’t be that far away, right? RIGHT?!

(HT: Brooklyn Vegan)

BY ANY OTHER NAME—Dev Hynes (AKA Lightspeed Champion) is the logical heir to Elvis Costello. His brand of songwriting crosses genres, but is suffused with a ’50s doo-wop flair and brutally honest lyrics. Onstage, he is funny, scattered, and maybe not altogether sane. Call it indie-folk or folk-pop or whatever; his music is above all, beautiful. PAC w/Flowers Forever, the Explorers Club; Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside, 9 pm, $11-12

Creeped out by puppets? Yeah, me too. I mean, with the exception of Statler & Waldorf and my favorite Christian farm animal, all puppets should be burned. Or shot. Perhaps both.

But despite my puppet bigotry, Lightspeed Champion loads his video for “Galaxy Of The Lost” with various colorful muppet-looking things that cause mischief and most likely consume the tiny kitten which appeared in the beginning of the clip.

No one is safe from the menace of puppetry.

I realize the sun has temporarily gone away and the idea of summer jams doesn’t quite feel the same in sixty degree weather. I blame the party pooper and his anti-summer post. We were all having fun, enjoying the sun, but then it started raining on everyone’s parade.

You know what? Eff that. It’s summer. It’s time to rock the summer jams all day, everyday. And, since these are dour times (it’s the middle of June and I’m still wearing hoodies!) and single MP3s aren’t going to cut it anymore, I went ahead and made a full on summertime Muxtape.

So please, crack open a Pacifico, kick your feet up, and pretend that you’re not at work, that it’s not a Wednesday, and that it isn’t miserably gray outside.

Listen to Summer Starts Now! The Muxtape.

Last week I posted about the 3900’ Festival’s plea for advance ticket purchases (or else they were going to cancel the event), well, guess they weren’t bluffing:

DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST, THE 3900’ FESTIVAL HAS BEEN CANCELED. REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED STARTING JUNE 20, 2008.

That was posted on the Union Records site, the promoters behind the 3900’ Festival.

Sad to see the festival fold like that, but judging by the comments on the original post more than a few people out there had opinions on the event—from the venue to the bands—which just goes to prove how difficult planning a festival like that must be. Bummer.

Some kids ruin the curve for everyone. These know-it-alls do their homework every night, ace every test, and ask the teacher for mandatory extra credit. And sometimes these pointy-headed goobers take it upon themselves to start a band, write hooky catchy songs, and make the lyrics as literary and hifalutin as possible.

Take, for example, LA chamber pop ensemble Princeton. (Their name alone should clue you in.) Their new EP is named Bloomsbury, which is not just a random word they chose, or a dead end street where they used to smoke pot, nor is it the name of the bass player’s beloved family dog. No, according to the band’s MySpace page:

Each composition on the EP is lyrically focused upon a member of the influential Bloomsbury intellectual collective that existed in London during the early 20th century. Lyrical portraits of Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes are each presented in a different musical framework with lush orchestral arrangements that draw from a collage of influences — Serge Gainsbourg’s Gainsbourg Percussions, The Kinks’ Something Else, Jorge Ben’s Forca Bruta and Jean Claude Vannier’s L’enfant La Mouche Et Les Allumettes to name a few.

Ummm…. okay. I don’t understand most of the words in that paragraph. Less talky more songy.

MP3:
Princeton - Ms. Bentwich

Ah, that’s better. So, yeah, the band’s got some serious conceits with their music. But when it sounds as fine as this, it doesn’t really matter.

Princeton plays tonight with Cereal and Psaltier at the Know; 2026 NE Alberta, 8 pm, free

Listeners don’t lie. Check out these testimonials!

- “I ordered 4 sets of these towels and I am extremely happy with them. They are really BIG and fluffy! Also, pretty!” -T. Knudsen, TX

- “FOR A VERY ACTIVE 8 MONTH OLD THESE ARE EASY TO GET ON AND OFF,DONT BUNCH UP WHEN CRAWLING,LIGHT ENOUGH TO BE OUTSIDE AND KEEP WARM IN AIR CONDITIONING PLACES,AND LAST… THEY LOOK ADORABLE ON!!!!” -H. Wood, NV

- “Excellent product and delivery time. Filled the gas and oil and started on the first pull. Very quiet as well. Well worth the money!!” -L. Miller, KS

This week, listener-approved podcast Your Radio Sucks includes music from Sloan, Sigur Ros, the Notwist, Lexie Mountain Boys, Dianogah (pictured), Joan as Police Woman, King Khan & the Shrines, the John Henrys, and the Hold Steady. Listen here.

The PCPA has just unveiled year number three of their Music on Main Street series—where they block off Main Street, between SW Broadway and Park, for an evening of free local music—and the lineup looks pretty promising.

Highlights include Fernando, All Girl Summer Fun Band (although the press release referred to the band as the “All Girl Summer Fund Band,” which makes them seem wealthier, yet less fun), Dirty Mittens, Lions of Batucada, and tons more. Also, this all-age concert series is at a friendly time (5-7pm), so you breeders can bring your ‘lil ones. Full lineup after the jump.

July 9- Fernando
July 16- All Girl Summer Fun Band featuring the Dirty Mittens
July 23- Freak Mountain Ramblers
July 30- National Flower
August 6- Lions of Batucada
August 13- Stephanie Schneiderman with Keith Schreiner
August 20- Jackstraw
August 27- Mary Flower and Reggie Houston

THESE NEW PURITANS, DAT’R, MEHO PLAZA
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside)

Alienation and paranoia run rife through the back alleys of the minds of These New Puritans, a half-electro, all-edges group from the UK. You might even call them punk’s answer to grime. It’s a futuristic deconstructionism, covered in dirt, dust, razor wire, and broken glass, to be left forever all alone. Emphasizing rhythm over melody, singer Jack Barnett chants cryptic apocalyptics that may or may not hold savage encoded secrets. Where does one thing end and another begin? Occasionally the band leaps into the clouds, sustaining a note or a melody, and when they do, the contrast is beautiful. The group’s live show reportedly matches the sound, and Barnett is supposedly confrontational and wild. And if being tossed into this disparate fury sounds frightening, it should—but remember: Catharsis is necessary. ART

Now here’s a little bonus for y’all: a behind the scenes look at editing. Here’s how I really finished the peice:

“And if being tossed into this disparate fury sounds frightening, it should. But remember: Catharsis is necessary. And goddamn—if you think you don’t need any, well… you’re sicker than we thought. “

Yup.

Listen to These New Puritans: Numerology

Holyfuckingshit.

Ok, man, be cool. Calmly just tell everyone that the Jesus and Mary Chain are coming to the Wonder Ballroom on July 17th, then once you are finished, you can scream like a little girl and….. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Oh well, I tried.

Art Spark is a monthly event courtesy of Sam Adams’ office and the Regional Arts & Culture Council… wait, why am I damaging my new jewel-encrusted manicure on this rough keyboard when I could just copy-n-paste their press release?

Every third Thursday, we gather at Living Room Theaters’ Lounge to meet, discuss, blather, applaud & plot the growth of the arts in Portland. Join us this Thursday, June 19th for the next Art Spark with host Musician’s Union Local 99!

Here’s what we promise:
Food & drink specials
Fantastic, rotating, monthly hosts from the arts community
Six@Six where our hosts have six minutes at six p.m. for a performance, a question, or a talk of their choosing
Freewheeling conversation for the rest of the 114 minutes
Our host for June is Bruce Fife the President of the Musician’s Union Local 99 and Jeff Simmons from Portland Radio Authority to talk about the newly-formed local, commercial free radio station.

Man, that was easy. And to think, I get paid for this shit.

Anyway, this event looks exciting (and not just for the food and drinks specials) since it will be the first open forum to hear more about the Portland Radio Authority’s role in the new commercial free radio station, albeit for only 6 minutes. But hey, food and drink specials, you just can’t compete with something like that.

My apologies for the Everclear reference in the title, it will never happen again. Promise.

THE DEVIL MAKES THREE, SASSPARILLA JUG BAND
(Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie) With the oceanside township of Santa Cruz, CA, serving as their center of operations, the Devil Makes Three have shimmied a strut the nation over, conjuring vivid revelations of porch-front hoedowns with mason jar swigs and a soundtrack of blustery bluegrass punk. Frontman Pete Bernhard’s nostalgic croon and choppy acoustic guitar strums lay the groundwork for upright bassist Lucia Turino’s groove-riddled low-end and Cooper McBean’s tenor banjo and fiery guitar interplay, forging an evocative blast of 1940s folk and 1990s retro-punk revivalism. But don’t let the bizarre designations deter you—this is one of the most engaging live shows you’ll see this side of the dusty saloons from the Old West. Hip-swaying and copious amounts of alcoholic imbibing are prerequisite (especially when they rip into “Old Number Seven”), as is the relinquishing of your reticence at the door. RJP

MP3:
Devil Makes Three - Old Number Seven

This is awesome: Some British asshole named Guy Hands (I know!) led a group of investors and bought the legendary EMI records last year. They paid $6.4 billion. As you may know, I’ve enjoyed watching the majors crumble. The last news I passed along contained a phrase that went something like: “I want to watch them starve then kick in their emaciated ribs.” Well, it’s happening. And it couldn’t be happening to a bigger asshole.

Get a load of this:

From the beginning, Mr. Hands did little to ingratiate himself either to EMI’s own employees or executives within the industry, a famously clubby business wary of outsiders. He acknowledged that he is not a music person, and has turned down invitations to visit the recording studio to watch artists’ recording sessions.

Hah! Eat it, sucker. We have no use for trash-eaters like you! Choke on a dirty $100 dollar bill, why don’t you!

More fun tidbits from the article:

Rupert Murdoch had privately scoffed at (Hands’) acquisition of EMI by saying, “MySpace is going to be the future of music, not record labels.”

Hate for it to be Murdoch, but in a way, he’s right. It’s pretty amazing that someone could come along and, in 2000-motherfucking-7, believe that the music industry’s problem is bad management, not a changing landscape (IE: cheap recording costs, illegal downloading, cheap online marketing). Corporate raiders WILL NOT save this sinking ship.

Again:

“You have to understand the artist’s psyche to make it work,” said Jazz Summers, who manages The Verve, a band signed to EMI…

A fun little tidbit:

The story has even turned comical at times. After Mr. Hands discovered that some employees were laundering costs for things that were illegal (drugs and prostitutes, he said), by itemizing them on expense reports as “fruit and flowers,” he set a strict travel and entertainment policy that required receipts for every expense.

Who were these artists with a hooker stipend?! That’s what I want to know. And finally, the death knoll:

To keep costs down, Mr. Hands has clamped down on expenses while he has waited — the company is still waiting — for widespread layoffs. But despite those measures, the company will not meet a cash-flow target as part of its covenants with its lender Citigroup. So he negotiated a three-month extension.

And if you like, just read the whole damn thing. Oh, and a funny aside regarding Rupert Mudoch’s prediction: the story below this one on the page reported that Myspace was not hitting their financial goals. But at this point, I sure wouldn’t bet against them.

SNAKE CHARMERS—Slink along to the vintage garage nuggets unearthed by the Detroit Cobras, perhaps the world’s best cover band. It’s rock ’n’ soul shaking, with full-throttle octane that could only come from the Motor City.

Okay, I guess I don’t really think the Detroit Cobras are the world’s greatest cover band (who should that title go to? The new No Age cover band that includes an actual member of No Age?), but they really jump-started the whole retro garage revival at the turn of the century and are still going strong. They also have some great, sleazy album covers, as you will see in the collected gallery posted after the jump. Enjoy!

w/Les Sans Culottes; Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside, 9 pm, $14

DAX RIGGS, JOHN BARRETT’S BASS DRUM OF DEATH, ADRIAN H & THE WOUNDS
(Roseland Grill, 8 NW 6th) Louisiana’s Dax Riggs has been a rock star in waiting for years. His resonant, crooning vocals and death-obsessed lyrics are compelling and unmistakable, but he’s gone through bands quicker than some people change their underwear. First there was the NOLA sludge-metal band Acid Bath; next the drugged-out, ’70s-glam-inspired Agents of Oblivion; and then Deadboy & the Elephantmen. Perhaps wisely, Riggs has finally gone solo, issuing We Sing of Only Blood or Love last year on Fat Possum. His most “pop” album yet, We Sing blends the soaring melancholy of the earlier Deadboy lineup with the bluesy rock of later Deadboy, and somehow it works. And man, this guy can still sing. WILL YORK

MP3:
Dax Riggs - Didn’t Know Yet What I’d Know When I Was Bleedin’

Dear Saw Whet,
I am very sorry I had to leave during the middle of your set last night at Valentine’s.

I am also very sorry that while leaving I almost knocked you over, although you were the one blocking the door. And, again, I am also very sorry that once I left Valentine’s, I held the door closed so End Hits‘r Rob Simonsen was awkwardly still trapped inside the bar, mere inches from where you were playing.

That was cruel.

Anyway, I know you (Becky Dawson) are part of Au, and I love that band so much it hurts. I also was impressed on how great your show (with full band!) was last night, so I promise you that I will attend your next show and not do anything disruptive. Probably.

Again, sorry.
Ezra Ace Caraeff

MP3:
Saw Whet - I’ll Say Nothing

Check out this new video from Snoop Dogg entitled “My Medicine” which is not only a C&W foot stomper, but it name checks Johnny Cash, includes Willie Nelson and is all about… well… here’s a lyrical hint: “You can’t buy me love, but you can damn sure buy me bud.”

Yeeeee-to-the-HAW!

Yep, that’s the setlist for the first My Bloody Valentine show in sixteen years.

I think I just peed myself a little.

(Photo by Kubacheck via Stereogum)

This just in: Dandy Warhols Postpone Portland date.
From Monqui:

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, The Dandy Warhols have announced that they are postponing the Portland show, initially planned for this Saturday, June 21 at the Roseland Theater.

The rescheduled date is October 5th at the Roseland. All previously
sold tickets for the June 21st date will be honored for the October 5th
date.

Monqui and The Dandy Warhols sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience
the postponement may cause patrons.

I wonder what the “unforeseen scheduling conflict” could be? Hair appointment? Season finale of Groomer Has It? Perhaps it has something to do with the rigors of running a weekly newspaper?

Sorta local band, Spoon headed to the flooded midwest (You laughed at them for those highwater pants, but whose laughing now?) to record a session for the folks at Daytrotter. Along with that recent Death Cab recording session this is the second major score for the site (whose Sean Moeller used to freelance for us), plus it’s mighty kind for a band of Spoon’s stature to have taken part. Anyway, while they were at Futureappletree Studio One the band performed some old faves, plus a cover of Paul Simon’s “Peace Like a River.” Oh, and here it is:

MP3:
Spoon - Peace Like a River

As part of the Penny Jam series (think La Blogotheque, but more local and far less French), summertime pop band Dirty Mittens took a trip to Old Portland Hardware. There, the color-coordinated band put on an excellent performance of “Time Forgiver,” the title track from their upcoming EP.

Also, if you have time to waste (i.e., if you are at work), check out the other Penny Jams, which include Magic Johnson performing at the Dollar Scholar, Dykeritz live at Grass Hut, and a few more as well.

Hey Penny Jams, if you want to film an episode in the Mercury offices as our staff updates their Facebook profiles diligently works in the background, let me know.

Good morning. As we shake off the hangover from last night’s Nurses show, here is a little record cover battle to kick off our week. I’m sure it’s been posted somewhere before, just not here. Oh man, that Nevermind baby is no match for the prog-supergroup powers of Asia.

Now let’s see how long I go before breaking down and posting “Heat of the Moment.”