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Manufactured landscapes

Highlights from a banner year in wordless music
Depending on our mood, most of us seek out albums that coddle our hopes, fears, and concerns; failing that, we want escapism, foreign environments that either take us where we want to be or startle us with the thrill of the new.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY + ANDREW FREDERICK | May 13, 2009

No man is an island

Two rootsy discs, 20 rootsy players
Anybody who needs to be reminded of the musical talent that swirls around and intermingles throughout our fair city probably doesn't listen to a ton of local music.

By SAM PFEIFLE | May 06, 2009

Seeing Sparks

The Fearless release of Eyes to the Sun
Those hardcore fans among you already have much of Eyes to the Sun in your collection. Sparks the Rescue have been selling nine of these 12 songs on a disc they've brought to shows and mailed out from time to time.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 29, 2009

A new hope

The Thermals' tentatively ambivalent Now We Can See
Amid a barrage of assessments of our new president's first 100 days in office, it's a ripe time for the Thermals to come back to Portland and offer their two cents'.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 29, 2009

Portland Music News: May 1, 2009

Sibilance
SEAN MORIN will perform his senior composition recital at UMaine Augusta's Jewett Hall on May 6.

By PORTLAND MUSIC STAFF | April 29, 2009

Westward ho!

The Phoenix survives Coachella
Forgot those rabid right-wingers with their hateful teabags — Coachella had the range, and the machinery for change, and the spiritual thirst. Oh and Leonard Cohen.

By GUSTAVO TURNER | April 29, 2009

Rattle your cage

Emilia Dahlin continues to push the envelope
You'll excuse Emilia Dahlin if her first release since the well-received God Machine in 2006 is a six-song EP.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 22, 2009

Ship, ahoy!

Pigboat proves metal can Float
Pigboat are not nu metal, or speed metal, or death metal, or glam metal, or any of the other metals, really.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 15, 2009

What can Brown do for you?

Take a walk along Eustis Ridge with Gunther
Our local alt-country renaissance continues this weekend with Gunther Brown's debut release, a five-song, 20-minute EP called Eustis Ridge.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 15, 2009

Girls gone wild

Making Friends and cultivating Strangers
Maybe it was a good thing after all that Jeremiah Freed packed up and moved to Los Angeles. Sure, the band broke up, but in the process bassist Matt Cosby met Pete Donovan and managed to drag him back here to Maine.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 08, 2009

Going down the road

John Paul brings Belmont Boulevard back to Maine
When John Paul comes to Slainte in a couple weeks, he'll be returning to the Portland scene where he got his start in the biz,

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 01, 2009

Taste of Summer

Arborea remain singularly breathtaking
For pure, shimmering, lush beauty, Arborea are hard to beat.

By SAM PFEIFLE | April 01, 2009

This way out

Hudson Eakin's solo project reaches for the Bandages
This week, we study the Portland diaspora, and Hudson Eakin has gone to Worcester, of all places. Isn't that like all the worst parts of Maine and none of the best?

By SAM PFEIFLE | March 25, 2009

Things fall apart

Hip-hop finds room to move at South-By.
As hipster, electronic, indie-rock, and rap cultures converge, MCs are taking cues from their other-genre contemporaries who rely on everything from stage props and antics to self-mutilation in the quest to entertain.

By CHRIS FARAONE | March 25, 2009