One might say that the summer live music season is in full swing with several high profile gigs all smashed into the next seven days. Whether your taste is Girltalk or Emmylou Harris, Shearwater or Sharon Jones, you've got a number of options this week.

Speaking of which, a number of options is more or less what defines the annual PDX Pop Now! Festival-- that, and the fact that all of those options are local and free. This year's fest kicks off three days of music Friday evening at 6:00 inside Rotture with Love Menu before concluding nearly fifty acts later Sunday night/Monday morning at 12:25 with New Bloods. In between, a number of bands you may be familiar with (and probably a few you aren't) will play indoor and out, including The Builders & the Butchers, Loch Lomond, A Weather, Blind Pilot, Norfolk & Western, Dykeritz, The Portland Cello Project, and Panther, to name just a few. We'll hear from some of the acts playing this year's fest including selections from this year's PDX Pop Now! compilation throughout the week.

Elsewhere, pick your flavor. Friday night, for example, features not only the PPN festival, but also Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings at the Oregon Zoo as they continue to tour behind their breakout 2007 release 100 Days, 100 Nights, and current NW darlings Fleet Foxes, who show everyone what all the fuss is about at the Doug Fir Lounge. The Seattle-based Fleet Foxes released their debut full-length recently on Sub Pop and if you posit that frontman Robin Pecknold grew up listening to his parents' Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young records you'd be absolutely right. Still, there's something about the album that impresses beyond a mere homage to influences, as the band somehow manages to combine elements of British folk and Americana along with those of contemporaries like My Morning Jacket in what is an assured debut to say the least. The Duchess & the Duke and Harper Simon and Eric Earley (Blitzen Trapper) open things up.

MP3: Fleet Foxes- "White Winter Hymnal"

Of course, all of that only (partially) covers the end of the week-- the rest is no less busy, including Swedish singer Anna Ternheim and Joseph Arthur (he of the recent Ryan Adams-like output) Monday night at the Doug Fir, Southerly's Krist Krueger with a solo tour kick-off Wednesday night at Towne Lounge on a bill that also features Whip and Slim Moon(!), and Shearwater with Tu Fawning and A Hawk & a Hacksaw that same night at the Doug Fir (a busy place this week, it seems). In case you missed it, Austin's Shearwater released their fifth and best full length this year, their Matador debut Rook. It's an album borne of tense and dramatic times, and few are able to play up the drama more than the band's off-kilter-voiced frontman Jonathan Meiburg, whose presence is the music's main engine. It all makes for listening that is at once unsettling and strangely comforting.

MP3: Shearwater, from Rook- "Rooks"

Finally, while she may not be on the hipsters' must-see list at this point (except for the ones who recognize the genius of Gram Parsons), they hardly come classier than Emmylou Harris. She recently released her 22nd studio album, All I Intended to Be, an effort that continues her recent move back to more traditional sounds after atmospheric albums with Daniel Lanois in the 90's. Aside from a stellar and fairly wide-ranging solo career, she's also been that rare ingredient over the years that makes everything she lends her voice to sound better-- whether she's been backing Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Lanois, or Bright Eyes-- Emmylou goes with everything. Plus, how good does she continue to look? She plays the Oregon Zoo Tuesday evening with openers Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Klein.

And that still doesn't get to all of it. Hear our concert calendar and the artists on it throughout the week on the opbmusic stream. What are you look most toward?

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, July 20 at 9:10pm