All Authors >

CHRISTOPHER GRAY

Latest Articles

Who gives a truth?

Augusten Burroughs and James Frey try to overcome authenticity scandals with grim new books
Both authors write largely about issues of addiction and abuse, but they couldn’t have more different styles.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 28, 2008

Ignoring the void

Surfwise leaves the ties that bind knotty and frayed
A deceptively conventional, open-minded documentary.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 21, 2008

Los Campesinos!

Hold on Now, Youngster . . . | Wichita/Arts & Crafts
Los Campesinos! are what happens when Sarah Records meets Minor Threat.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 12, 2008

A Peapod grows in Portland

A young label sports sonic wisdom
Harrity’s albums sound like the work of an invisible hand, and it’s apparent that he likes it that way.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 07, 2008

Kernel-industrial complex

Examining a landscape where crops only feed food
Aaron Woolf’s documentary King Corn, which opens the weekend of conversations about local farming and sustainable consumption, is a sound prototype for the new wave of populist eco-docs.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 23, 2008

Darien Brahms + American Music Club

Music seen at SPACE Gallery, April 21, 2008
Not to diminish where she is right now, but Darien Brahms would make one hell of a novelty dive-bar act in 20 years.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 23, 2008

Get with the brogram

The Constantines at T.T. the Bear's Place, April 18, 2008
Just shy of midnight, one of the few dozen of us hardcore Constantines disciples at T.T. the Bear’s warns his girlfriend: “You might not like them. They’re really manly.”

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 22, 2008

Symphony of buds

Nat Baldwin and friends make a familiar but beguiling album
Apart from being an ephemeral player in the local music scene — he played at Strange Maine last fall, while living in Bar Harbor — New Hampshire-based upright bassist Nat Baldwin has some very influential friends.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 16, 2008

Record lows, indies peak

Musical notes
Last week’s number 10 album, Van Morrison’s Keep it Simple, sold just 37,000 copies.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 16, 2008

Cult Maze

Music seen at Geno’s + SPACE Gallery, April 4 + April 6, 2008
Early on in Cult Maze’s all-too-brief tenure as Portland’s best indie-rock band — probably when they were still called The Funeral — I offered to buy Joshua Loring a beer before his set.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | April 09, 2008

Always a bridesmaid

But Kathleen Edwards steps forward on her third album
Asking for Flowers is the slickest album yet from Kathleen Edwards — the Canadian alt-country songwriter frequently heralded as the next Lucinda Williams — and her most raw.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 19, 2008

The power of love

A respected music critic contemplates Celine Dion and has a crisis of conscience
Carl Wilson’s recent entry into Continuum’s esteemed 33 1/3 series — a series of books by critics and musicians devoted to canonical pop albums — is framed by an irresistible concept.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 19, 2008

Samuel James

Music seen at SPACE Gallery, March 8, 2008
It seems trite to refer to Samuel James’s CD-release show as a coronation, but the evidence supports it.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 12, 2008

Buzzkill

The fickle state of the hype machine
In a self-affirming cover story on “the new speed of hype,” Spin magazine’s March issue profiles Vampire Weekend.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 05, 2008

Reverence without pity

Black Mountain spin the past into vital modern rock
Unless you actually think Ozzy Osbourne still has some fire in his belly, you can’t help but argue that Black Mountain will be the most exciting rock show to come to Portland in some time.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | February 20, 2008

Senses come alive

Did art prove science before science did?
Are Jay-Z’s synapses wired to express supreme confidence?

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | February 13, 2008

The odd couple

Revisit one of the great films about the artistic process
British director Mike Leigh is known as a master of kitchen-sink realism, making films about family and relationship conflict weighed down by the demands of contemporary working-class existence.