Music

The Dead Weather | Horehound

Third Man (2009)
It's no coincidence that four of the 11 songs on the Dead Weather's debut — "I Cut like a Buffalo," "3 Birds," "Rocking Horse," and a cover of Bob Dylan's "New Pony" — make reference to the animal kingdom.

By MIKAEL WOOD | July 22, 2009

Trife Diesel | Better Late Than Never

Trife da Label (2009)
For anyone who best understands things in white suburban terms, hip-hop is similar to lacrosse.

By CHRIS FARAONE | July 22, 2009

La Roux | La Roux

Polydor (2009)
Polydor (2009)

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | July 22, 2009

Sax Ruins | Yawiquo

Ipecac (2009)
After a quarter-century of punishing, hyper-rhythmic acrobatics, drummer Tatsuya Yoshida has taken a sharp detour.

By MICHAEL PATRICK BRADY | July 22, 2009

George Thorogood | The Dirty Dozen

Capitol (2009)
Before you press PLAY, you know what you're going to get on The Dirty Dozen : music to drink lots of beer by.

By JEFF TAMARKIN | July 22, 2009

Born to rock

Deer Tick take it to the roadhouse
The last time Deer Tick were in Portland, at SPACE Gallery in November 2007, then-21-year-old frontman John McCauley decided to sing the national anthem. He sprung offstage and hit the floor belting the Tony Bennett standard "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in a nasal voice soaked in equal parts whiskey, battery acid, and gravel.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 15, 2009

Tower of Song Festival, Eric Bettencourt, and the Outsiders

Sibilance
This is shaping up to be one of the best summers in a long time when it comes to outdoor and festival-type shows.

By PORTLAND PHOENIX STAFF | July 15, 2009

Music Seen: Femi Kuti, the Loblolly Boy

And Luke Kalloch
On record, Femi Kuti can't help but come off as a slightly vanilla version of his mad genius father Fela (popularizer of Afrobeat music, also known for having 12 wives at once, among other things).

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 15, 2009

Multi-faceted

Shardlow and Goodyear and a brand-new studio
How we think about making and consuming music is changing. It is not news that labels, albums, and record stores are dying, pushed aside by new ways of conducting the commerce of music. (Though at the turn of the 20th century the song was king and the trade was in sheet-music publishing rights, so maybe this is all a return to form, just with new technology.)

By SAM PFEIFLE | July 15, 2009

Antiques | No Fortune

self-released (2009)
self-released (2009)

By IAN SANDS | July 14, 2009

Those Darlins | Self-titled

Oh Wow Dang (2009)
If summer finally decides to arrive this year, it'll have a heckuva soundtrack waiting for it.

By ZETH LUNDY | July 15, 2009

Dinosaur Jr. | Farm

Jagjaguwar (2009)
The much ballyhoo'd resurrection of the original Dino lineup a few years ago — with bassist/crybaby Lou Barlow and laconic-to-the-point-of-sometimes-seeming-retarded-or-maybe-dead frontman J Mascis burying the axe — saw the faithful turn ecstatic at the dropping of '07's Beyond .

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | July 14, 2009

Son Volt | American Central Dust

Rounder (2009)
With American Central Dust , Jay Farrar has now accomplished something he was unable to do either during Son Volt's initial run (1995-99) or his evidently aborted solo career (2001-04): released three consecutive albums of undeniable quality.

By JEFF TAMARKIN | July 15, 2009

Will C | Evil in the Mirror

Brick (2009)
The old adage that says "if you want to work in television, you should start by mopping floors at NBC" is usually bullshit.

By CHRIS FARAONE | July 15, 2009

The Big Hurt: Oddest proposal

Music News in Brief
"Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy," said Al Sharpton to Michael Jackson's children. "It was strange what your daddy had to deal with."

By DAVID THORPE | July 14, 2009

String vacation

Soundtrack for summer in Maine
With the Portland Symphony's elimination of its popular, but debt-inducing, Independence Pops concert series, Portlanders will have to travel a little farther to satisfy their classical-music appetites this summer. But it will be well worth the mileage.

By EMILY PARKHURST | July 08, 2009

Music Seen: Lost Cause Desperados

and Johnie 3, DeeCRACKS, The New 45 at Geno's, July 2
Lost Cause Desperados have kept a low profile over the last few months, with gigs few and far between. None of that downtime has gone to waste, however, as Portland's kings of warp-speed garage-punk have been hard at work on their upcoming album, Desert of Broken Glass.

By DAN CLARK | July 08, 2009

Shudder to think

Chill out this summer with Goose Bumps, Vol. 3
With the tools available to electronic musicians — software and limitless collaborators available through the Internet — the only limiting agents are ambition and work ethic. Well, talent, too, but that can be as easily wasted as ever if you don’t know how to use the platforms available to you for putting it on display.

By SAM PFEIFLE | July 08, 2009

Jodi Explodi, Meantone, Tony McNaboe and more

Sibilance
JODI EXPLODI 's Shipyard EP is out and available, after a few delays here and there. It's the first disc from the band since the four-song Demo-Arigato from 2006. It appears to have some kind of zombie theme to it, but we haven't caught a listen yet.

By PORTLAND PHOENIX STAFF | July 08, 2009