Stop looking at me, swan!

The Thermals have revealed the cover art and track listing for their forthcoming album, Now We Can See. Their Kill Rock Stars debut (out on April 7th) is also the band's first recorded effort with new drummer Westin Glass.

Hey look, it's the tracklisting (because the only thing better than listening to songs is reading their names):

1. When I Died
2. We Were Sick
3. I Let It Go
4. Now We Can See
5. At The Bottom Of The Sea
6. When We Were Alive
7. I Called Out Your Name
8. When I Was Afraid
9. Liquid In, Liquid Out
10. How We Fade
11. You Dissolve

Another week, another Mercury music section to read while you are upsidedown. On a ski lift. With your pants off. It happens to the best of us.
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Oh dear god, the recession will kill us all! Or, at the very least, it will make an impact on our local music scene. Club owners, big and small, and local music promoters weigh in on the damage caused by our current economic pity party.
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Welcome Glasvegas, another Scottish band to break your wounded heart and toss it into the loch.
LISTEN:

Glasvegas - "Lonesome Swan"
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Psychedelic and metal? Epic and ethereal? Bearded and long-haired? Los Angeles' Ancestors have it both ways.
LISTEN:
Not happening. Their shortest song is over 16 minutes long (!), so if you want to listen, suck up their bandwidth, not ours.
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It's been forever—and their nemesis, George W. Bush, is about to fade into the sunset—so, Quasi, where is the hell is that new record?
LISTEN:

Quasi - "Nothing From Nothing"
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But wait, if you call in the next 30 minutes our operators will also send you the following music columns, for free: Cary talks about the most anticipated local releases of 2009, which I chew the fat with the hiphop duo in the Chicharones.
LISTEN:

The Chicharones - "You Gotta Move"

Seattle, what the fuck?

Reading our sister paper to the north is giving me nightmares: Three members of their local hiphop scene cowardly shot during a show. A threatened Ricin attack on 11 local gay bars. Seriously, when did the Emerald City turn into Gaza?

That said, can we just take a moment to appreciate how nice things are here in Portland right now? Not to discount what has happened in Seattle, but I'd just like to sit back and acknowledge our harmonious nightlife, our peaceful music scene, and how nonthreatening Portland living is. No shootings. No threatened attacks by homophobic terrorist. Let's keep it this way.

A little birdie has told us that the open-ended experimental folk stylings of Ah Holly Fam'ly have found a place to build their nest in local label Lucky Madison. The official details are coming later this week, but expect a new record from the Ah Holly Fam'ly crew sometime later this year. Congrats to both band and label. Everyone wins.

Photo: Pete Murray

Local synth-pop band Hockey has made a pretty rapid ascension from basement band to inking a deal with a pair of major labels—Capitol domestically, Virgin overseas—all based on the strength of their self-released Mind Chaos album. Drummer Anthony Stassi, fresh back from a European jaunt, took a moment to answer End Hits' pesky questions.

What happened on the previous US tour, did the biodiesel van not make it?
The previous tour was kind of a shit-show. We played one show in Phoenix to two of our friends and the bartender. There were a few shows like that. Asparaga, our veggie-van, made it as far as Denver and then began breaking down. A lot. We missed the rest of the shows and spent a week sitting in an auto shop with a drunk mechanic trying to figure out what went wrong with the veggie oil. Eventually we took it to another mechanic and it took him a day to figure out that we bought a total lemon. We were relieved it had nothing to do with the vegetable oil, but we still had to sell it to a grease monkey for scrap metal ($300). Jerm [Reynolds] and I had to drive our shit all the way back to Portland in a U-haul with our tails between our legs. It sucked.

The Starfucker boys are have a little contest for all you would-be fashion designers and t-shirt connoisseurs. Design a t-shirt for the band (preferably one-color) by February 1st, send it to this address, and if you are the winner you will see your design on sale—for one night only—at their Valentine's Day show at the Wonder Ballroom. But I don't know why any of you bother, since my totally awesome Hypercolor design is surely going to win.

The winning entry (definitely not me) will receive a pair of tickets to that show, some free shirts with your design on it, and (probably) numerous trips to the local band kissing booth that will be in full effect that night. Possibly featured in that booth, members of opening acts Strength, Explode Into Colors, and Dirty Mittens. Bring some lip balm and mints, because with all that kissing you better be prepared.

Tired of your iPhone not symbolizing your deep love for metal and bad art. Yeah, me too. Thankfully Last Rites Merchandise has developed these very evil "art skins" to show the world that I like technology and images of birds bursting from the skull of an infant.

Paul Booth has teamed up with MusicSkins to bring fans tons of new ways to personalize their cell phones, laptops, iPods, Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars, and more! Select pieces of Booth’s frightening and provocative artwork are now available as removable vinyl decals for a huge number of personal devices!

I am so evil that I would totally kill a... wait... one sec, my mom is calling...

Link courtesy of our cooler older sister up north.

Found dead at home, cause as of yet unknown. He was 60. A guitarist part of one of the most influential throbbing rhythmic pump ever, a simplicity almost criminally impossible to mimic.

Also, trying not to be cynical here, but hopefully this means no more new Stooges records and no more tame in-store concerts. The memories, as I will hold them:

There was a time when a band signing to an independent label meant that their sound might roughly match that of their brand new contractually obligated peers. Fat Wreck Chords immediately comes to mind, even though most of their bands sounded so alike thanks to the recording practices of de facto punk engineer Ryan Greene. Not the case with every label, but with some. SideOneDummy has done almost everything to shatter this ethos (taking a cue from Epitaph, most likely), and to prove that they're not just interested in releasing music from such spectrum-spreading bands as Gogol Bordello, Chuck Ragan, Flogging Molly, 7 Seconds and Big D and the Big Kids Table (or perhaps, conversely, to prove that that's exactly what they're interested in...), they've signed none other than Rainier, Oregon punkers Broadway Calls.

While the band's enjoying the laurels of their newfound business arrangement, the jury isn't necessarily out on such venerable punk sites as punknews.org, with blogger comments rifling in, wondering whether or not the move was a good one. From such thought-provoking sentiments as "SideOneDummy is turning into the new Fat Wreck Chords" to the kind-of-hilarious "does this mean they will turn into a gimmick band?"
Me, I quit caring a long time ago, in most senses, which label a band happened to be signed to. Luckily I love reading argumentative punk rock blogs, and that my allegiance to anything "Oregon" is only growing by the nanosecond.

Check out this track from the band's last self-titled release on Billie Joe Armstrong's Adeline Records, and if you live across the pond, try and catch the band opening for Alkaline Trio this month.
LISTEN:

Broadway Calls - "Suffer the Kids"

In light of the ridiculous "Not Enough 21+ Shows" nonsense in the WW last week, let's talk some PDX Pop Now!.

First PPN! went all non-profit on us—there goes my theory that all the cash went straight up their volunteer's noses—and now the all-age music champions have recently received a project grant courtesy of the Regional Arts & Culture Council. While not quite flush with cash (No gold-plated stage for you!), it's a nice sign to see PPN! get some monetary love for all their hard work.

And while we are talking about the festival, it's time for your band to get out there and apply:

For those interested in submitting music for consideration for inclusion on the compilation, the process is now easier than ever. Once on the submissions page of the PDX Pop Now! website, artists can make a submission online through a simple mp3 upload, a process no more difficult than attaching a file to an email. The submission form can now also be filled out online, though it will need to be printed, finished off with an old-fashioned hand-scrawled signature and mailed to PDX Pop Now! to complete the submission. Artists can still opt to mail in CDs of their music submissions if they prefer. February 29 is the deadline for song uploads, while all release forms are due by March 15. The PDX Pop Now! mailing address, submission guidelines and all other pertinent info can be found on the submissions page.

Good luck.

Long after I stopped bleaching my hair and quit pretending to care about skateboarding, I always held a special place in my heart of hearts for the (secular...sort of. They were one of the signature bands for Tooth & Nail for a while) skate punk of Bremerton, WA's MxPx. Over the years, my allegiance was reaffirmed when at a particularly shitty Warped Tour stop in Sacramento in 2005, I was about to leave prematurely when I heard the familiar tones of "Chick Magnet," raced back through the turnstile and swayed and nodded like I was 15 again. They saved the whole goddamn day, and for some people could save the early part of this year with the announcement of their release date (March 10, 2009) and artwork for their new album.
Titled On the Cover II, the artwork (pictured above) is not artwork at all, but a sort of time-elapsed update of the original On the Cover album from 1995. And while I don't know the tracks yet, I would hope that one of them could sound even remotely similar to this acoustic version of Secret Weapon's "You're On Fire," which the group filmed at my apartment in Chico, CA earlier this year, although perhaps much more plugged-in. Side Note: MxPx was by far the most entertaining act we had in this little series of intimate acoustic performances in my humble abode (aside from possibly Portugal. The Man). Dud performers included such soulless drivel as The Color Fred, Armor For Sleep and Protest the Hero (even though the guy was effing hilarious).

I think you can see my cat in the video as well (you can definitely see all the furniture I sold in order to move to Portland, and the haphazardly strewn beer bottles that gave me the courage to do so). Regardless, it's tough to last as long as MxPx has in such an iffy genre, and they've definitely taken it in the ass recently, having to open for flavor-of-the-month bands on packaged mega tours. But their integrity remains enough to keep them going. Am I utterly alone here?

So the annual RiverCity Bluegrass Festival is coming to town January 9-11, bringing pickers, grinners, singers, and sinners together for a pluck-happy, buck-slappy weekend of fun. (God. I'm sorry about that last sentence. A week off and I'm a little out of practice. Also, has anyone in real life ever heard anybody refer to Portland as the "River City"?)

It all takes place at the Oregon Convention Center, that most romantic and intimate of venues, but the party doesn't stop there, no sir! As indicated on the website, jamming is encouraged at the venue AND after hours at the Red Lion Hotel. Bring your instruments! The Red Lion is even opening up their ballroom for mandoliners and hand-drummers and all! But do heed the warning at the end of that webpage, in all red letters: "They are requesting that no one sleep in the jamming areas."