Violent Femmes at Britt on Tue., June 19 Acoustic punks, with sweet lyrics, sour vocals ranges, iconic songs, and a perfect balance of rage, and goofiness. There had never been a band like the Violent Femmes when they launched in the ‘80s, and there still hasn’t been.   Lung

There’s a generally held belief that critics are hateful misers, lurking in a dark room while stroking a cat like a supervillain, waiting for any opportunity to blindside innocent, unsuspecting artists on nuclear blast. In my experience, they’re more akin to cultural patriots; fans so passionately committed to the cause

Try as hard as your stepdad might with that Foghat tune, cover bands will always be the epitome of lame. Unless of course they are following in the tradition of the great American songbook, and not simply trying to match the greats note-for-note, but reinventing the songs to make them

Truth told, the rise of Ramen has always confused me a bit. As a growing boy that preferred to measure his food by the pound, rather than the bowl, the idea of soup for dinner seemed… Lacking. Lacking what? Everything beyond being hot that made it a satisfying meal. The

For a band called Slow Corpse, it rose from non-existence pretty quickly. The Ashland indie-rockers dropped a pair of EPs in late 2015, and immediately started packing clubs throughout the west, signing with Portland’s Cadillac of indie labels, Tender Loving Empire, in 2017. The band’s first record with TLE, Fables,

  There’s no way to describe Bob Log iii that doesn’t sound like something you dreamed up on ayahuasca. A man wearing a daredevil jumpsuit and a mirrored full face motorcycle helmet sits on the stage playing hideously overdriven blues licks so savage they make the devil appear at the

The Bouray doesn’t waste a lot of time. After bandleader John Johns exited The Rogue Underground late last year, he assembled a new group, and hit ground gigging. Barely a weekend goes by that The Bouray isn’t playing somewhere in the valley. And on March 10 they played the release

Metal isn’t just a sound; it’s a calling. A bottomless rabbit hole of sub-genres and underground heroes ignored by all but the most dedicated, who will gladly go to their grave in a studded jean vest with their arms crossed in a pair of rock horns like the good lord

Everything comes back in 20-year cycles. And though it may go by different names (garage, power-pop, indie), the stripped-down, revved up sound of ‘90s pop-punk complete with all its goofball antics is having a resurgent moment as those that grew up listening to it come into their own. Portland trio

It’s said that we never really leave high school. For music critics of a certain age, that can be a problem, as they endlessly pine for the fading sounds of their fading youth. For my certain age, however, it bring the extra complication that music was something very different when