Langhorne Slim in a very entertaining set Sunday night at the Crystal Ballroom.

The first shows sponsored by opbmusic finished up this weekend, as Langhorne Slim wrapped up a mini "tour" around the region, ending with the day-long free birthday event at the Crystal Ballroom Sunday. Besides the great turnout, it was good to talk to a number of you in person at the shows.

Langhorne Slim started the Sunday evening bill at 7, and by the time The Long Winters began, it was pushing 11 and many had left for the night. For those who stayed, minus one odd heckler, it was a fine -- if short -- run through The Long Winters' catalog. Worth it.

mp3: Pushover

opbmusic will be sponsoring more shows this year, of course, and we'll letcha know.

Additional photos from the McMenamin's Great Northwest Music Tour here

Posted by dchristensen on Tuesday, January 29 at 10:43pm

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The week's action is highlighted by what is no doubt one of the more anticipated bills of the young year, as Yeasayer and MGMT play Holocene in Portland on Wednesday night. It's hard to slap an accurate label on the music of Brooklyn's Yeasayer. The band's unironic embracing of world rhythms, combined with elements of vintage pop, dub, and what the kids call indie rock has made their debut full-length All Hour Cymbals one of the more talked about releases of the past few months. It's a rare thing for a band to come along sounding so fully formed, so aware of what they can do from the get-go, and Yeasayer pull it off with ease whether they mean to or not. MGMT, meanwhile, are fresh off an appearance on Letterman (wearing capes, no less) and their own debut, Oracular Spectacular, was just issued by Columbia.

A lot of new releases to hear this week, too, including the solo debut from Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla. Somehow, between producing for Tegan & Sara and recording a new Death Cab album due out in the spring, Walla found time to finally give a batch of his own songs the studio treatment. The result, Field Manual, drops Tuesday on Barsuk, although it took something of an arduous path to get there. As you might recall, a hard drive housing the album was seized by U.S. border officials last year as it was in the process of being transfered from Vancouver, BC, leaving many wondering if it could have had anything to do with the political content of some of the songs. Luckily, there were backups on tape, because it's doubtful that the hard drive will ever leave security purgatory.

Also out this week, Ida's Lovers Prayers, the Radar Bros.' Auditorium, Willie Nelson's Moment of Forever, Joe Jackson's Rain, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down's We Brave Bee Stings & All, Vampire Weekend's self-titled effort, and the Helio Sequence's Keep Your Eyes Ahead, among others.

Among the rest of the live music to be had in the area: Liars and No Age play the Wonder Ballroom on Monday night; Wednesday features former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell with Will Hoge and Jeremy Fisher at the Mission Theater, while Tim Finn and Miranda Lee Richards are at Mississippi Studios and cellist Gideon Freudman plays Pix Patisserie on Hawthorne; Thursday, it's Southerly with Minmae and Minor Thirds at Kelly's Olympian, as well as Nada Surf and Port O'Brien at the Doug Fir; the week closes out with locals The Dimes, Derby, and Andy Werth at Holocene on Friday, while veteran roots-bluesman Chris Smither plays two shows: Friday at the Waters Cultural Center in Hillsboro and Saturday at the Shedd Institute in Eugene.

MP3s: Yeasayer, from All Hour Cymbals- "2080" and "Sunrise"

The thread is open-- what's on your musical minds?

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, January 27 at 10:17pm

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Among a lot of things happening on a soaking wet Saturday night is the return of Portland's Norfolk & Western to the Doug Fir. After laying low for much of 2007, the band gigged around a bit in the latter part of the year, and also traveled to Spain for work on their upcoming album, which should see the light of day sometime in the summer or fall of 2008. They headline the bill tonight that also includes Point Juncture, WA and Bark, Hide and Horn. Elsewhere tonight, Langhorne Slim and his band continue their run as part of the McMenamin's Great Northwest Music Tour at the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. In case you missed it, Langhorne's been putting it on the line all over the area lately, including to packed houses at Edgefield and Kennedy School over the past couple of nights. In short, if you've missed him, you've missed out. Tonight's show is the second to last as part of the tour-- he closes out tomorrow night at 7:00 (FREE, all ages) at the Crystal Ballroom. Speaking of which, the Ballroom's 94th birthday celebration tomorrow boasts a bunch of great acts in one convenient location. The bill includes The Renegade Saints, The Builders & the Butchers, Bobby Bare, Jr., The Long Winters, Nick Jaina, Autopilot, Little Pieces, and more.

As for our show tonight, we'll hear new and upcoming music from Nada Surf, Throw Me the Statue, Fergus McCormick, Barton Carroll, British Sea Power, and more.

As always, we'd love to hear from you, even if it's just to say that you can't get enough of this rain. The thread is open, tell us all about it....

Posted by jpetersen on Saturday, January 26 at 9:04pm

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Have fun if you go, but be hyper-vigilant...

Taken from the wonder of toothpastefordinner.com

Posted by jpetersen on Wednesday, January 23 at 3:52pm

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The weekend may be about over, but there's plenty to look forward to this week, including anticipated new releases, dynamic (and free!) opbmusic approved performances, and some big ticket mid-week shows. To begin with the latter, when we last checked in with The Decemberists they were checking out, so to speak, curtailed by a mysterious illness within the group that abruptly halted their planned "Long & Short of It" tour. The band returns this week, presumably healthy, with two shows at Portland's Crystal Ballroom, Tuesday the 22nd and Wednesday the 23rd. They make up the first half of a four show run in the Great Northwest, the other two planned for Seattle next week. Credit the band, too, for spreading the exposure to their Portland musical brethren: after San Francisco-based act Dead Trees open Tuesday night, the other three bills include stellar locals Pseudosix, The Shaky Hands, and The Builders & the Butchers, in that order. This all comes just after news of a full-length live release from frontman Colin Meloy coming in April on kill rock stars.

Elsewhere this week, nor'easter Langhorne Slim and his band continue their area run as part of the McMenamin's Great Northwest Music Tour with five shows beginning on Wednesday night at the Old St. Francis School in Bend. Your friends here at opbmusic are sponsoring the event, which moves later in the week to the Kennedy School in Portland (Thursday), Edgefield in Troutdale (Friday), the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove (Saturday), and the Crystal Ballroom in Portland (Sunday) as part of their 94th birthday celebration and a bill that also includes the Long Winters, Bobby Bare Jr., The Builders & the Butchers, Renegade Saints, and more. All of these shows are free, all ages, and begin at 7pm, with the exception of the Crystal Ballroom show, which is an all-day event. We'll be out in force at several of these venues throughout the week passing out opbmusic goodies and such-- we'd love to have you come out to say hello.

Much else going on throughout the week, too, including an intriguing bill at the Doug Fir on Wednesday night featuring Musee Mecanique, Michael Hurley, and MBilly. The Stolen Sweets play the Doug Fir on Thursday, along with 3 Leg Torso and Amoree Lovell; another all locals bill the same night features Echo Helstrom, Leigh Marble, Chris Robley, and Jon Garcia at Berbati's Pan. Friday is the busiest night of the week, as Seattle's Cave Singers play the Doug Fir with Tu Fawning and White Hinterland. Also from Seattle, also Friday, is Barton Carroll at Mississippi Studios on a bill that also features Dolorean's Al James. Carroll has a new release out this week called The Lost One. More shows Friday include Toumani Diabate at the Aladdin Theater, Swati at the Hawthorne Theater, White Williams with Health and Linger & Quiet at Holocene, Shelley Short (as part of the Triple Dare Reading Series) at the Someday Lounge, and Ryan Adams & the Cardinals at the Elsinore Theater in Salem.

The new release week is no less active, with Tuesday shaping up to be the first truly busy new release date of the year. Included are new full-lengths from Cat Power (Jukebox), the Drive-By Truckers (Brighter Than Creation's Dark), Jack Penate (Matinee), and Matt Costa (Unfamiliar Faces), among others.

The thread is open....what's on your minds?

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, January 20 at 10:07pm

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Live as in right now (3:15pm pacific). Let's all watch together, shall we?

Aww, too late! We'll post a link to video from the performance, undoubtedly coming soon...

UPDATE! Okay, if you missed it live, you can see the entire thing below. The whole to-do was originally meant to be an in-store, but the number of people forced the band into a slightly larger space nearby. Still, seeing Radiohead in a small club with 100 or so friends ain't bad. As Thom Yorke said at one point, it turned into a "gig".

Posted by jpetersen on Wednesday, January 16 at 2:08pm

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Our weekly look ahead tonight reveals another slow week for new releases (it's next week when things start to get busy), but there is one big fish. The Magnetic Fields' first album in four years, Distortion, drops on Tuesday, and features a sort of revamping of their sound-- a distortion, if you will. Frontman Stephin Merritt, nearly a decade removed from his 69 Love Songs magnum opus, points to the Jesus & Mary Chain as a major inspiration for the newfound sound-- specifically their deliciously noisy 1985 debut Psychocandy. It's a risky change given the devout fanbase the band has won over the years, but it's a change that works (and seemed necessary given the corner in which they seemed to have worked themselves on 2004's i). The Magnetic Fields will be touring later in the year, playing two Seattle dates, but none in Portland.

Also, plenty of live action to look to in the week ahead, including an appearance from quirky veteran folksinger Michael Hurley (who also plays a Doug Fir show January 23rd with Musee Mecanique and Mbilly). Hurley's most recent release came just last year with Ancestral Swamp. He plays the Laurel Thirst on Wednesday night. Elsewhere this week, it's the first of a series of shows featuring Langhorne Slim. He begins his run as the January installment of the Great Northwest Music Tour, presented by McMenamin's and opbmusic.org, at the Olympic Club in Centralia, WA on Thursday night before moving on to the Hotel Oregon in McMinnville on Saturday, and several more dates in the area the following week. Slim and his trio bring a manic energy to their music, as we found out during their OPB in-studio visit last summer. Oh, and did we mention these shows will be FREE? Yeah, you're so there.

Elsewhere this week, it's busy, too: Castanets and Whip play the Someday Lounge (Wednesday); A Cautionary Tale, Quaker Gun, and the Nathaniel Talbot Trio are at the White Eagle (Wednesday); Sir Richard Bishop, Om, Lichens at Berbati's Pan (Thursday); Jeremy Enigk at Dante's (Thursday); The Bees at Kelly's Olympian (Thursday); The Shaky Hands with Swan Island at Holocene (Thursday); and Boy Eats Drum Machine with The Antecedents at Holocene (Friday), among others.

The early week thread is open for business, use as needed...

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, January 13 at 10:18pm

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Your Saturday night features music o'plenty around the Rose City, including the return of Scott McCaughey's Minus 5 to the Doug Fir. The long running, used to be the side project but now mostly the main project of McCaughey (and a seemingly cast of thousands he's invited along over the years) most recently released a self-titled effort in 2006 (although it's often referred to as "The Gun Album") that featured the contributions of Colin Meloy, Ken Stringfellow, and John Wesley Harding, among others. In other words, in addition to the usual McCaughey goodness, there's no telling who might wind up on stage with him over the course of the night. The bill also includes Casey Neill & the Norway Rats and Oh Darling.

Elsewhere, it a CD release show at Mississipp Studios for one-man Portland act Carcrashlander, along with Graves and Lake. Cory Gray writes and records his songs under the CCL moniker, although the self-titled release also features a roster of some of Portland's finest: Adam Selzer, Laura Gibson, Dave Depper, and Amanda Lawrence among them. Carcrashlander the album is newly available on Parks & Records-- the label's first release, as a matter of fact.

Also tonight, retro fuzz-pop is in order at the Nine Muses Acoustic Tavern on a bill featuring Silverhawk, The Village Green, and Michael the Blind. Not sure how the "acoustic" part will fit into all of this, but Silverhawk, led by the brothers Densmore, is gearing up for the release of Hangover Bicyle Ride come March on Mastan Music.

As for our show tonight, lots of fresh, new goodies to offer, including the first we've heard from the upcoming release from Portland's Weinland (opening for The Mother Hips tonight at the River City Saloon in Hood River, incidentally). La Lamentor drops March 4th on Badman. Also, something new from the notoriously reclusive Canadian singer-songwriter Hayden, as well as music from recent releases from Sia, Marah, and more.

This thread is an open thread, use as you see fit....

Posted by jpetersen on Saturday, January 12 at 8:58pm

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The Doug Fir tonight offers a pairing that would have seemed a bit strange a few years back, and not only because Weinland was just a mere glint in frontman Adam Shearer's eye at the time. Chico, California's Mother Hips were your standard jam band once upon a time. After a long layoff beginning in 2002, however, the band seems to have remade themselves (leaving that grate, dead road behind)-- both on their 2006 EP Red Tandy, and on their most recent effort, last year's oddly-titled Kiss the Crystal Flake. Familiar touchstones like Petty and Young are still in the mix, to be sure, but the angular guitars of a song like "Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear," are not that far removed from the Spoon tree, something hardly recognizable when set next to the Hips' earlier, jammier work. We just wonder where that name comes from...

Locals Weinland, fresh off a whale of a show just last week at the Doug Fir, open things up, the entire lineup in tow for a change. Tonight's gig marks the first time since October that the band has performed with all members included, according to Shearer. Chances are good they'll be previewing material from their upcoming album La Lamentor, set for an early March release on Badman. If lead single "Sick As a Gun" is any indication (hear it at their myspace), it's gonna be a good one.

MP3: The Mother Hips- "Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear"

Stream: Weinland's opbmusic session

Happy weekend!

Posted by jpetersen on Friday, January 11 at 4:20pm

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Because we need a new thread, and because there's so much to talk about.

•That Radiohead band we hear so much about, they of the #1 spot on the US and UK charts? Not coming to Portland!

•Those domestic violence charges against Shins guitarist Marty Crandall and his now former girlfriend that you never read about here because we didn't want to get all tabloid-y? Dropped!

•The artwork for that upcoming Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks album Real Emotional Trash, out March 4th via Matador? Confirmed!

•That form of informational delivery where I ask a question, only to provide an answer with said information? Getting tired.

•North Carolina's Avett Brothers unveiled the new video for their song "Paranoia in Bb Major," today via Spinner. The band next plays Portland on April 10th at the Crystal Ballroom. They visited us in August.

Finally, the 2008s are on the way! A few new musical nuggets from upcoming releases for your enjoyment...

Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down: ► "Bag of Hammers"

The Helio Sequence: ►"Keep Your Eyes Ahead"

Kelley Stoltz: ►"Your Reverie"

The Mountain Goats: ►"Sax Rohmer #1"

Throw Me the Statue: ►"About to Walk"

The Teenagers: ►"Scarlett Johansson"

British Sea Power: ►"Waving Flags"

Hello, Blue Roses: ►"Shadow Falls"

The Raveonettes: ►"Dead Sound"

Consider this an open thread, use as you see fit...

Posted by jpetersen on Wednesday, January 9 at 4:15pm

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We start 2008 off right tonight with an in-studio visit from Portland's Loch Lomond. Led by the singing and songwriting of Ritchie Young, the group has expanded to upwards of nine members since its first incarnation as a solo project back in 2003. This shift has been reflected in their live shows for a while now, but the release late last year of Paper the Walls marks the first time that it's been represented on a recording. We'll hear a lush set of songs from the band, and talk to them about the advantages and challenges that being in such a large group has brought with it.

Also tonight, we'll hear new music from the Mountain Goats, from the upcoming Heretic Pride. The new album drops next month just in from of the duo's two night run at Portland's Doug Fir on the 25th and 26th. Plus, music from new releases from the Drive-By Truckers, The Raveonettes, Liam Finn, and more.

MP3: Loch Lomond, from Paper the Walls- "Carl Sagan"

MP3: Mountain Goats, from Heretic Pride- "Sax Rohmer #1"

The thread's open all night...

Posted by jpetersen on Saturday, January 5 at 10:48pm

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As you may or may not recall, the charming Swede Jens Lekman played Portland's Someday Lounge back on November 7th. In case you missed it, and have been kicking yourself ever since, Jens (and Kristin Lidell on accordion) offered up a little post-gig goodness...

Posted by jpetersen on Thursday, January 3 at 10:20am

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