There are a few highlights in what is otherwise a fairly sparse Tuesday for new releases this week, the biggest of which is perhaps the second major-label release from Death Cab for Cutie. Narrow Stairs is the band's follow-up to their 2005 Atlantic debut Plans, and it's by all accounts darker and rawer than its predecessor. To their credit, after a decade on an indie label Death Cab isn't exactly playing it safe now that they're established on a major, a trap into which so many before them have fallen. Instead, we get the eight-minute-with-extended-intro lead single "I Will Possess Your Heart," the creepiest stalker song since Costello's "I Want You," (although it sounds so nice and reasonable set to music). The band is gearing up for a summer of festivals and extended touring, more or less beginning on Memorial Day weekend with performances scheduled for both the Sasquatch Festival at The Gorge in George, WA, and the aptly-named Memorial Weekend Music Festival at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend.

Video: Death Cab for Cutie, from Narrow Stairs- "I Will Possess Your Heart"

Another long-established band with new music out this week is the Old 97's. Blame It On Gravity is their first effort since 2004's fairly mundane Drag It Up, and early reviews are calling it a return of sorts to the sound of their hey-day, established on albums like Too Far to Care and Fight Songs. Not bad for a band who could have ridden off into the alt-country sunset and called it good. But they're not dead, they're in Dallas, and the locale switch to the town where they got their start appears to have served them well.

On the live front this week, an interesting bill at the Doug Fir Lounge on Friday night features a trio of Swedish females. One woman band El Perro del Mar (Sarah Assbring), Lykke Li, and Anna Ternheim are all touring with new releases to their credit, each exhibiting a slightly different angle on pop music. From the Valley to the Stars is the second full-length from El Perro del Mar, and it continues the retro, occasionally girl-group-inspired sound found on her debut, albeit in slightly more subdued ways. Li, meanwhile, has been touted by Bjork and does not fall far from the dance-floor inspired vibe of much of that artist's early solo work. Her new EP out in the U.S. is called Little Bit. Ternheim, meanwhile is perhaps the most introspective and singer-songwriter oriented of the three, but it's her golden voice that makes the music. Her recent release is entitled Halfway to Fivepoints.

MP3: El Perro del Mar, from From the Valley to the Stars- "Glory to the World"

MP3: Anna Ternheim, from Halfway to Fivepoints- "To Be Gone"

MP3: Lykke Li, from the Little Bit EP- "Dance Dance Dance"

Also this week, Tapes n' Tapes play Eugene's WOW Hall Monday night (snubbing Portland entirely in the process), and Erin McKeown plays at Mississippi Studios on Wednesday with opener Justin Jude, while The French Kicks are at the Doug Fir Lounge with openers Pseudosix. On Friday, it's the British duo The Kills along with The Child Ballads at Berbati's Pan, while Mason Jennings, Brett Dennen, and Missy Higgins are at the Roseland Theater, and The Posies, Blue Skies for Black Hearts, and The Nice Boys are at Dante's.

This is an early-in-the-week open thread! Something you want to discuss? Drop us a line...

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, May 11 at 9:06pm

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Let's reflect for just a moment on how wonderful it is to be in a place like Portland, where when we speak of music that is "local" and "home-grown," we're talking about the kinds of diverse and state of the art talent that we are.

That was nice, wasn't it? No disrespect to the bar bands of Pocatello, ID, but I'm still adjusting to this kind of musical habitat, and as a relatively new Portlander, I'd like to think that my window of opportunity to fawn over the locals has not yet passed (I get a year, as I understand it). Anyway, case in point Friday night: the Independent Publishing Resource Center's 10th Birthday Bash at the Someday Lounge. The IPRC celebrates a decade of offering workshops, workspace, tools, and numerous other publishing resources with something they're dubbing "Superstar Open Mic." The Helio Sequence's Brandon Summers, Quasi's Sam Coomes, Spigot's Nann Alleman, Jeremy Wilson, Sarah Dougher, Leigh Marble, Jennifer Lynn, Tara Jane O'Neil and Carson McWhirter all take to the stage for solo performances, while right next door at the all-ages Backspace, The Thermals' Hutch & Kathy, Iretsu and Ghost to Falco play for the same event. Bash, indeed!

Elsewhere Friday, also on the locals front, it's the CD release show for Silverhawk's Hangover Bicycle Ride at the White Eagle. The long-running band led by the brothers Densmore, Sam and John, are Oregonian through and through, tracing roots to Coos Bay and beyond before a relocation to Portland a few years back. One might say they specialize in the feel-good, with songs with titles like "All the Girls Eat Drugs," and "Drinking Makes Me Feel Better," delivered with between-you-and-me grins. Also, the May edition of The McMenamin's Great Northwest Music Tour continues at the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove with the Luminescent Orchestrii. The self-described Romanian Gypsy Punk quartet from New York whips up an Eastern European frenzy with a unique mix of flavors, continuing Saturday night on the coast at McMenamin's Sand Trap in Gearhart, before three more shows in the area next week.

MP3: Luminescent Orchestrii, from Too Hot to Sleep- "Stranger"

Speaking of Saturday night, the Minneapolis-based Cloud Cult (aka The Band with the Lowest Carbon Footprint Around) plays the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland. Craig Minowa's band tours in a biodiesel-fueled van, uses only recycled materials in their products and records at a studio housed on Minowa's organic farm. Oh yeah, the music's not half bad, either-- and that's something given the fact that they've just issued their sixth album in the past eight years with Feel Good Ghosts. The formula, by now, is familiar: there really isn't much of one. There are at various moments, however, elements of acts like the Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, and early Flaming Lips, while the occasional electronic blip and bleep suggests an heir to the Beta Band in the land of Sinclair Lewis. They're currently on tour with fellow Minnesotans Kid Dakota.

MP3: Cloud Cult, from Feel Good Ghosts- "When Water Comes to Life"

The thread is wide open...

Posted by jpetersen on Friday, May 9 at 1:29pm

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We see the return this week of some names you've likely known for a long time, if it can be said they've ever gone away at all.

That's most certainly not the case for Mr. Elvis Costello, who tends to inhabit one of his other selves as opposed to ever laying low. If he's not making a rock record with his longtime cohorts The Attractions, then he's recording a slightly rootsier version of himself with more recent collaborators The Imposters. If he isn't recording a live jazz album with a full orchestra, then he's writing a symphony. Then again, maybe he's just wooing one of the world's great female jazz vocalists, who also happens to be his wife. His latest is the hastily planned, hastily recorded, hastily released Momofuku, which finds him joined by Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and singer-songwriter Jonathan Rice, in addition to personnel from The Imposters. For all of its thrown-together nature, it's perhaps Costello's freshest-sounding batch of songs in a while. It comes out in CD format Tuesday after an initial issue on wax and megabyte.

A couple of familiars on the live front, too, as Joe Jackson and The B-52's play shows this week in support of recent releases. If you close your eyes, it almost feels like 1989-- which is not to say the current versions of the artists are dusty museum relics, quite the opposite. Joe Jackson released Rain back in January marking his first set of new material in five years and just his second foray into pop material in the past twenty-five. In other words, the man that made a splash with his Look Sharp! debut back in 1979 has followed his own muse, opting for an output that reads more Gershwin or Cole Porter than Nick Lowe or XTC. It seems likely we might get a bit of both Tuesday night at the Aladdin Theater.

MP3: Joe Jackson, from Rain- "Invisible Man"

As for The B-52's, well, they certainly don't look any different, do they? One wonders what kinds of chambers they've been housed in these sixteen years since their last full-length. But as if almost defying time and gravity, there are the beehive hairdos (depends on the photo), Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson still belting out harmonies beneath them, and the zany Fred shouting out zany lyrics. Funplex is the return to form of the other band from Athens, GA, albeit with a synth-sheen that is a new addition. The B-52's play with opener Eagle*Seagull Wednesday night at Portland's Roseland Theater.

MP3: The B52's, from Funplex- "Hot Corner"

Also this week, the return of the Brooklyn-based band Firewater, who release their first album of new, original material in six years this week with The Golden Age. Frontman Tod A undertook a travelling sabbatical of sorts back in 2005, makng his way throughout the middle east while collaborating with local musicians he met along the way (and also getting drugged, robbed, detained, and mightliy ill while he was at it). It's much of that experience that informs the new album, with politically charged numbers alongside others that seem at once world-weary and defiant in the face of it all. One might call it world-circus-punk. Firewater comes to Portland on June 4th.

MP3: Firewater, from The Golden Age- "Borneo"

Meanwhile, performances in the area include the CD release show for Silverhawk's Hangover Bicycle Ride. The Portland-based band plays Friday night at the White Eagle. Elsewhere Friday, it's the IPRC's 10th Birthday Bash at the Towne Lounge Someday Lounge. The night features a host of Portland musicians offering up solo sets, including the Helio Sequence's Brandon Summers, Quasi's Sam Coomes, The Dharma Bums' Jeremy Wilson, and more-- plus The Thermals' Hutch & Kathy, Iretsu, and Ghost to Falco at Backspace.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts, inspired commentary, and fruitful questions-- the thread is yours...

Posted by jpetersen on Sunday, May 4 at 9:32pm

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Ah, the hometown gig (or, in many of these cases, the [adopted] hometown gig): Putting your music out there for the people who know you best; looking out at a sea of familiar faces who actually recognize you, too; getting bombarded with guest list requests from every Dick and Jane who was ever your neighbor or your friend's friend or the radio guy that played your album; and sleeping in your own bed for a change when it's all said and done. Hometown shows are the order of the night in the Rose City, and I imagine at least some of these scenarios are at least somewhat true for at least some of tonight's performers-- particularly those just returning from the road.

Decemberist frontman Colin Meloy, along with Laura Gibson, left town about a month ago, tour EPs and charm in tow, for a series of dates all over the country. Uncoincidentally, Meloy has a new live album out on the kill rock stars label to promote as well as a new tour EP of Sam Cooke covers, while Gibson, if you'll recall, has a new tour EP of blues and traditional numbers and was the subject of a recent opbmusic in-studio session. The duo returns home to the Wonder Ballroom tonight, where there's no telling what kind of local musical friends might be joining them.

Actually, check that last part. We know it won't be any of the members of Weinland, who are holding their own tour homecoming brouhaha at the White Eagle tonight, along with openers A Weather. They've been out on a three-week jaunt of western states in support of this year's La Lamentor. We also know it won't be their occasional musical cohorts in Dolorean (7p.) and Norfolk & Western (10p.), who form a doubleheader of sorts tonight at Mississippi Studios with bills also featuring Jackstraw (early) and Chris Robley & the Fear of Heights (late).

As if all of that were not enough, we also know that Ms. Gibson won't be joined tonight by the other musical Laura in town, Laura Veirs, who begins a tour of her own tonight at the Doug Fir Lounge on a bill that also features Liam Finn and Let's Go Sailing. It's a solo trip this time out for Veirs, who released the excellent Saltbreakers full-length last year and has a new traditionals-filled EP entitled Two Beers Veirs, which must mean that it only takes a couple before Ms. Veirs starts breaking out the Mississippi John Hurt numbers. In case you don't remember (or never knew in the first place), she was our first in-studio guest just about a year ago. Not a bad beginning, eh?

Elsewhere tonight on the local front, Ohmega Watts is at Holocene, while Little Beirut plays Imbibe. Meanwhile, the "Queen of Rockabilly" herself, Wanda Jackson, brings her famous growl to Dante's.

Did you happen to catch any of these shows? We'd love to hear your takes on and takeaways from them-- do tell. The thread is open for that, or anything else that's on your minds, musically speaking...

Posted by jpetersen on Saturday, May 3 at 9:10pm

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