-
2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Gresham often feels almost like an afterthought to Portlanders—a way station to gas up or grab snacks and supplies on the way to Mount Hood and points beyond. Living as I do right on the border between the cities, I can attest that there’s much more to the fifth-largest city in the state than you might catch on first glance. Taco trucks and Mexican restaurants abound, as do markets and bakeries catering to the Eastern European diaspora.
-
2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Optdemics The Atom Complex (Braxeling)From Braxeling Records, Portland’s finest purveyors of psychedelia, garage rock, and power pop, comes a sharply recorded collection of jangly, heartfelt tunes from a new trio made up of members of the High Violets, The Honus Huffhines, and the Mean Reds.
-
2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
It took only a single visit to Green Anchors, the 7-acre industrial park located next to the Willamette River in North Portland, for Nicholas Harris to fall in love.
-
2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
About one-quarter of the way into Alison Moyet’s performance at the Crystal Ballroom last week on Wednesday, May 14, the music went dead, and the 63-year-old singer-songwriter shared a confused look onstage with one of her accompanists. “I’ve sung the wrong bit,” Moyet said. After a brief exchange with the two gents handling all the music, it was decided: skip it and move on.
-
3 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
In 2021, when singer-songwriter Danni Lee Parpan recorded her album Truth Teller, she invited her friend, composer and artist Caroline Shaw, to join her in the studio to add some harmony vocals. By all accounts, the session was rough going, and for a very simple reason, according to Shaw: “I fell in love that day.”“Caroline had schoolyard church giggles,” Parpan remembers. “I was totally oblivious. I was like, ‘What’s wrong with this person?
-
1 month ago | 
portlandmercury.com | Robert Ham
To truly appreciate the art of elijah jamal asani, it helps to slow down and match his pace. The music released by the young ambient artist is patient, measured, and beautifulâlike watching grainy super-8 footage of a flower opening to the sun, played back in slow motion.
-
1 month ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Every Deerhoof performance feels like a surprise. There are elements that fans have come to expect. The group generally sets themselves up onstage in a line, with guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich sandwiched between bassist-vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki and drummer Greg Saunier. And chances are, it will be difficult to pull one’s attention from Saunier as it often looks as though he’s trying to keep a steady beat while his four limbs attempt to escape from his body.
-
1 month ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
2–5: Cowboy JazzSounds like: A tumbleweed rolling through a downtown jazz club. Guitarist Ryan Meagher and saxophonist Bryan Smith know how goofy their band’s name sounds. That’s half the reason they chose it. “By itself, Cowboy Jazz has a lot of playfulness to it,” Smith says, sitting outside The 1905 after the quartet’s recent performance, “and it can be seen as, the music is going to be cheap.” “Two words that don’t really fit together,” Meagher interjects.
-
1 month ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
The last thing I expected to do upon reading the first poem in Cornfry (Buckman Publishing, 80 pages, $12), the first collection of verse by Rich Perin, was laugh out loud. But how could I not when the opening salvo in the book, titled “Social Stigma of Singular,” is this: You should be allowed to marry yourselfI think“Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah,” Perin exclaims when I mention how I reacted to several pieces in the book with laughter. “Damn right my poetry has got a lot of humor in it. It’s life.
-
1 month ago | 
thestranger.com | Robert Ham
This review originally appeared in the Portland Mercury. David Cronenberg’s chief cinematic obsession has long been the human body and all the painful, pleasurable, and generally fucked up things that people do with their corporeal forms.
