SOUNDBENDER, in playing the LOKI EP-release party, will be saying goodbye. The band have announced it will be their last show. They were WTOS 2008 Battle of the Bands champions and released two full-length albums, Victory Mile (2007) and Surviving the Fall (2009), and played consistently in the Seacoast area up through Portland and north over the past nine years. The “Sibilance” staff wish the boys good luck.
Not a bad show put on by the 16 high school bands that competed in the preliminary round of the ROCK OFF this past weekend, all vying for the title of Best High School Band in Maine. Though it’s a longstanding tradition in Portland, this year featured a few new wrinkles. First, the MAINE ACADEMY OF MODERN MUSIC has taken over from REINDEER RECORDS in hosting the event, getting help from the PORTLAND MUSIC FOUNDATION andMAINETODAY.COM. Second, instead of being held in the McAuley High School auditorium, the event was held in, you know, an actual rock club: EMPIRE DINE AND DANCE. Bands played everything from bluegrass to metal to jazz-influenced prog rock, with the winners featuring a nice diversity of styles and representing a wide geography. Those moving on to the Rock Off finals, to be held May 1 at Port City Music Hall, are: FYVE (Winthrop High), the LOUDEST MIME (Freeport High), LOW-FLYING AIRPLANES (Yarmouth High), MOUSAM RIVER RAMBLERS (Kennebunk High), PILGRIMAGE (Cheverus High), and MIDNITE HAZE (Telstar High — Bethel). Kudos go out, too, to the HOLY BOYS DANGER CLUB, who not only featured three veterans of past Rock Offs (bassist Nathan Cyr was in Fort Kent in high school — that’s like being in Canada, where listening to Rush is mandatory), but also extended their closing guest set with a cool take on the Beatles’ “Yer Blues” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” while judges took way too long to tabulate the results.
Related:
Ghost stories, Winged migration, Injustice for all, More 
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
- Local heroes, ’09 edition
The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.
- Local flavor
Local journalist and acclaimed hip-hop scribe Andrew Martin has corralled a flavorful roster of Rhody-based rap talent on the Ocean State Sampler , 10 exclusive tracks available for free download.
- Beyond Dilla and Dipset
With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.
- John Harbison plus 10
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
- Shout it out!
Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .
- Punk wreck
Guitar punk rock has a long and, frankly, dull history.
- Less
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New England Music News
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