August 23, SPACE Gallery
VAMPIRE WEEKEND’s young and disaffected stage presence fortunately doesn’t even begin to disguise how fun and oddly wholesome they are. Paul Simon rhythms + great lead vocals = my future wedding band.
YACHT’s one-man show forsakes Jona Berchtolt’s most impressive feat — that he actually made this bizarro music — in favor of a ridiculously enthusiastic, poorly sung solo dance party. Really wasn’t that fun for the rest of us, but you’ve got to admire the dude’s guts.
DIRTY PROJECTORS were slightly off their game, sick as dogs on their first day of a national tour. Regardless, as their short set wore on the band’s rapid-fire juxtapositions and towering vocal presence won me over.
August 24, Jay York’s Church
After his set, MATT ROCK confirmed my suspicions that it’s a rare thing to see an accordionist and a drummer play together. What I caught of his set with Grupo Esperanza’s DYLAN BLANCHARD explained why (subtlety on the percussion is key), but in the many moments when the gambit worked, it felt like a movement was upon us.
August 25, SPACE Gallery
MODERN SYNDROME returned to the scene, and they apparently have a keyboardist now. They’re still a kick even when ironing out the kinks, but it’ll be interesting to see how they maintain that raw spontaneity with a new player.
CULT MAZE pulled out a dream setlist and nailed it, even as one of Andrew Barron’s drums fell over near the end. I sometimes wonder if this band are too urban for Portland, or if “August syndrome” still pervades.
August 26, The Soundpost
WNYC public radio staple DAVID GARLAND may be an underground hero, but boy were his songs earnest. After his mind-numbingly literal “graphic novel” song (“With the caption in the corner”), I had to make an early exit and think about how great it is that postmodernism has come a long way.
Related:
2008 Listravaganza Part 2, Buzzkill, 2008 Listravaganza!, More 
- 2008 Listravaganza Part 2
Everything you wanted to know about the year in music, in tidy lists of 10.
- Buzzkill
In a self-affirming cover story on “the new speed of hype,” Spin magazine’s March issue profiles Vampire Weekend.
- 2008 Listravaganza!
We are not at all sick of bands with animal names yet and seem to have a soft spot for Erykah Badu that we kept very hush about all year.
- Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso is Brazil’s Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, and Paul Simon all rolled into one.
- Grimace and nod
A four-film series at SPACE Gallery highlights just the sort of cinematic and stylistically ambitious documentaries the Oscars annually ignore.
- Sounds like awesome
Citadel sound like every great psych-rock band from the late ’60s, and Modern Syndrome sound like every great indie-rock band from the ’90s.
- Portland scene report: December 28, 2007
Our favorite SoPo troubalords, Fire on Fire , continue to rack up praise on the Web and beyond.
- Why? so serious?
The lines between avant-garde hip-hop, pop, and indie rock continue to blur with defiance on Alopecia, the third album by the Anticon trio Why?.
- Caricature vs. character
Michael Chandler’s documentary, Knee Deep is less a whodunit than a who-wouldn’t-have-done-it.
- The Big Hurt: The year in not really giving a shit
In the annals of American pop history, 2008 will surely go down as a year when our nation had more-important shit to worry about than music.
- Going for 'Distance'
To get an idea of the remarkable sprawl of supplies, clutter, and chaos involved in SPACE Gallery's forthcoming exhibit by Swoon and guest collaborators, "Distance Don't Matter," there are two good places to look: the gallery itself, and SPACE Executive Director Nat May's Facebook page.
- Less
Topics:
New England Music News
, Entertainment, Paul Simon, Performing Arts, More
, Entertainment, Paul Simon, Performing Arts, Theater, Chris Gray, Vampire Weekend, David Garland, Less
