Tagged: cutoftheday

Is Grails the best band in Portland ? It's certainly not a popular choice, but for a certain subset of people in this city, Grails is the perfect band, really—a combination of Holy Sons' wandering desert blues, the knotty guitar work of Richard Bishop, and the sort of expansive, all-conquering B-movie soundtrack pieces that score all those weird horror movies at the back of Movie Madness. Grails' music isn't easy to get into, but it's worth the time, especially if you have a good pair of headphones and 10 minutes to spare on your lunch break. [...]

Today, Starfucker's new label, Polyvinyl Records, announced that you can start pre-ordering the band's forthcoming full-length (entitled Reptilians )—and get an immediate MP3 download of the entire album when you do. It has been a long time coming. Let's recap... A little over two years ago, the name Starfucker was never far from the lips of pretty much every musically inclined person in Portland—which, if you haven't noticed in this town, is pretty much everyone. Led by the ever-quirky multi-instrumentalist/singer-s ongwriter Josh Hodges, the group had just released its self-titled debut and was quickly being ushered in as one [...]

The first time I saw Onry Ozzborn, he was buried in the middle of one of those big-ass Portland hip-hop bills at the Hawthorne Theatre, with eight acts in a row all hoping someone would notice them. And he looked depressed—his dry sense of humor falling flat on the young crowd between songs. I half-expected him to uter those legendary words from Back the Future : "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet—but your kids are gonna love it." Onry Ozzborn - That Good (f. Sapient) [...]

With the end of the year quickly approaching, print publications and blogs are scurrying to finish up their "Best Of" lists. Looking back, it seems each of the past few years have generally been defined by a few common threads, and 2010 is no exception. This year we've seen the rise of several dream-fueled, shadowy pop projects centered on the power of their female vocalists. National names like Beach House, Warpaint and Twin Sister have all had a super year. 2011 should see this seductive trend manifest even further with more breakout acts. One local duo that [...]

Howzabout some fire from Tim Perry and his new, post-Pseudosix project, AgesandAges? This track—the opening number from the band's debut disc, Alright You Restless —is pretty big time, both in scale and emotion. Those harmonies kill me, and the Southern folk-rock vibe of the guitarwork is right up my alley. This thing tackles choral pop without coming off all squeaky-clean the way choral pop often sounds. The album—which Perry told me recently was about a group of people that cut themselves off from society and start a communal lifestyle—comes out in February. We can't wait! [...]

"Suns" caught my attention for two reasons when I popped it in to the ol' computer today: 1. It reminds me a bit of the Posies, who play at the Aladdin tonight. 2. I'm on a holiday music kick, and there's a lot of seasonal references here, from snow globes to sleigh bells and even some religious imagery in the lyricism (praying, heaven, etc.). The Study is going to catch a lot of folks' attention, though. Recently relocated to Portland from Las Vegas—and before that, from Pennsylvania—Eric Morelli and Jack Roberts make tunes at [...]

These days, there are few secrets on the Internet. Our insatiable need for information and transparency is erasing the boundaries of personal space and the private; when the government's secrets end up on WikiLeaks and Taylor Swift's new album is just a click away for anyone with knowledge of rapidshare, it makes true surprises few and far between. But I like surprises, especially in the arts. It's easy to lament the lose of seeing a film or hearing an album that totally blows you away and realizing that you know absolutely nothing about the person beyond the art. [...]

It's hard to set a poem to a song and not have it just sound like a poem and a song, competing for attention. The Tree People manage it on "More than Yoko." I'm a big fan of Stephen Cohen's delivery, and he's all alone on this particular tune, so he gets to set the pace and the tone with just his guitar and his vocals. It's a little moment, one imagines the exchange taking place under covers in a warm room with rain falling outside. Or maybe in the car on the way to the airport (because no one [...]

I went a few months, in the beginning, thinking Living Proof must be a Christian hardcore band. I was wrong, but the music still moves me to speak in tongues. Though the promising Portland duo has been slowed by side projects and perfectionist tendencies, it looks as though this shit is finally going to hit the road in...wait, "late summer 20103? So, real soon, I guess. The sun isn't about to come back out. Still, while I listen to these sweet soul samples over forward-thinking beats and hear these two civic-minded MCs, Prem and Tope, I get a little fire [...]

Well, crap. I've always had a soft spot for Jonah's sturdy pop melodies, syrupy vocals and the grand scale of their music—but somehow the band's new album, The Wonder and the Thrill , got lost in the shuffle and we didn't preview Jonah's CD release show (tonight at Doug Fir) in WW . It speaks to the volume of great local bands and touring acts that a group like Jonah—one that deserves the attention of the local POPulace—gets overlooked, not just by me, but by the local press in general. But it also speaks to Portland's resistance for [...]

This week [and last] we're doing something a little different. I sent out a Tweet saying "The next five PDX artists to email an mp3 with the subject line 'COTD' get written up at LocalCut." An hour later, I had five new songs in my inbox. Here are those songs… Download audio file (badvibrations.mp3) Alex Arrowsmith , longtime friend of the blog and current Shaky Hand, didn't really need to send us this track under the guise of our experimental Twitter MP3-fishing. But then again, we sorta missed [...]

This week [and last] we're doing something a little different. I sent out a Tweet saying "The next five PDX artists to email an mp3 with the subject line 'COTD' get written up at LocalCut." An hour later, I had five new songs in my inbox. Here are those songs… Download audio file (Glow.mp3) It is 5:15 pm in the middle of the week as I write this. I feel hi-strung and work looks like Everest in front of me. Like anyone, I fantasize about escaping all that. And if [...]

This week we're doing something a little different. I sent out a Tweet saying "The next five PDX artists to email an mp3 with the subject line 'COTD' get written up at LocalCut." An hour later, I had five new songs in my inbox. Here are those songs… Day two and things are already getting weird. Mister Saturday (a.k.a. Peter Saturday) is, apparently, a Portland reggae artist whose songs are nearly all about Star Trek . Some of them cover specific episodes or films ("Trouble With Tribbles," "The Search for Spock"), and some [...]

This week we're doing something a little different. I sent out a Tweet saying "The next five PDX artists to email an mp3 with the subject line 'COTD' get written up at LocalCut." An hour later, I had five new songs in my inbox. Here are those songs... The first submission was from an ol' friend of the site, Devin Gallagher (of Typhoon fame, who also runs the local label High Scores and Records). Apparently La Playa is the combination of his band/solo project, Ghosties , and another HSR act called Sweeping Exits . [...]

It takes a special person to remix a raunchy R. Kelly song that's already been remixed by the Pied Piper himself. But Copy's take on "I'm a Flirt"—a song the King of R&B (sorry, The-Dream, but you're not quite ready to steal the crown) originally wrote for Bow Wow back in 2007—somehow manages to one-up the both original versions by taking it from the champagne room to the dancefloor. Download audio file (Flirt.mp3) It's not like there's much wrong with the original version of "I'm a Flirt"—a perfect slice [...]

Congrats to Starfucker for signing to one of this fine nation's best labels, Polyvinyl. In fact, congrats to Starfucker on a lot of stuff. The Portland electroacoustic dance-pop outfit, in their own words, "wised up and took the power back." It has dropped some management, dropped the silly Pyramiddd name, and now it's dropping this bomb, "Julius," from a forthcoming Polyvinyl disc. Whatever didn't kill Starfucker would appear to have made it stronger, and hot damn does it feel good to have Starfucker back. Download audio file (julius.mp3) Seeing as how [...]

I can't say I am intimately familiar with Trumans Water. The 19-year-old schizo-guitar-pop outfit, often billed as more Pavement than Pavement—wilder, less sensical, more angular—has spent most of its lifespan in relative obscurity, where it was safe from latte-sipping, Hummer-driving douchebags like me. But now that I've heard the Portland-based quartet's new album, O Zeta Zunis (it's 13th-ish record; out today!), I'm ready to like it and make it uncool. And because Asthmatic Kitty is re-issuing old material, I won't even have to illegally download Trumans Water's back-catalogue! When I first pressed play on "5-7-10 Split," [...]

Back in the mid-aughts, Strength was the talk of Portland. The funk-electro-soul-pop group's sound was fun but relatively earnest—despite the fact that strength began as an art school band—and there was a Michael Jackson/Prince vibe to what Strength was doing that was otherwise absent from the Portland music scene. Until the band's appearance at last year's PDX Pop festival, we had kinda started to wonder if Strength was done for. WIth only a single album to its name—2006 full-length Going Strong —it seemed that the band might be banished to the dustbins of Portland music history. But [...]

Taco Neck, "I Heart U.S.A. (with Onry Ozzborn and Ceschi Ramos," Tutorial (Self-released) Download audio file (iheartusa.mp3) I pretty much said what I needed to say about Taco Neck in today's paper, but I also wanted you to hear what I was freaking the fuck out about. DO NOT SLEEP ON THIS ALBUM. It is incredible. "I Heart U.S.A." features one of more adventurous beats on Neck's debut EP, Tutorial —it includes a full string section and live-played stand-up bass and some gorgeous lines from the oft-underrated [...]

Corin Tucker spends most of her debut solo album, 1,000 Years , trying to distance herself from the shadow of her former band. It's not an easy task: Sleater-Kinney was, in the words of renowned rock critic Greil Marcus, "America's best rock band" before it went on indefinite hiatus in 2006. But while many songs on 1,000 Years feature acoustic guitars, brushed drums, and even cello, "Riley" harkens back to Tucker's early days as a screamer, and it's a welcome return to form. "Riley" is also the perfect choice for a first single: it's [...]