Van Dyke Parks - Wednesday @ Mississippi Studios
If you’re a music geek, the name Van Dyke Parks is music to your ears, considering the man’s pop pedigree. He has contributed lyrics to many great Beach Boys songs (”Heroes & Villains”, “Surf’s Up”), performed with The Byrds, produced albums by Ry Cooder and Randy Newman, and provided string arrangements for Joanna Newsom’s album Ys. As well, he recorded the intricate and far-reaching LP collector favorite Song Cycle. He comes to town not in support of any new music, nor is there any indication of what he will be up to tonight. But considering the man’s track record and his fascinating solo work, you would be foolish to miss out on a performance of this magnitude in as intimate a venue as Mississippi Studios.

Slabtown Bender - Friday through Sunday @ Slabtown
Busy this weekend? Not anymore you’re not, as you’ll want to have yourself parked in the friendly confines of Slabtown if you want to walk around town calling yourself a rock ‘n’ roll fan. Over the course of one weekend, a ridiculous number of incredible garage, punk and rock acts will take over this NW Portland bar and there is plenty of gems to be found in this overstuffed lineup. This includes the fuzzy rumblings of Ty Segall, the pub rock/glam hybrid Sir Lord Von Raven, two of the Bay Area’s best pop garage outfits Shannon & The Clams and The Dirty Cupcakes, and a bevy of local favorites like Pierced Arrows, The Bugs, Pure Country Gold, and The Foxgloves.

Daedelus/Nosaj Thing/Jogger - Monday @ Rotture
A fine package tour this. It brings together three young bucks from the world of electronica. All are from the Los Angeles area, and when they’re not remixing each other’s work, add a warm glow to the their own liquidy grooves. The emphasis throughout is on wowing synthesizers, dripping bits of sonic ephemera and beats that stir together elements of hip-hop, electro, deep house and smatterings of disco. Even if you play the wallflower for this night, you’re going to have plenty to chew on from the sidelines.

The Rumble skipped January but returns again on February 2nd at its usual location, Holocene. For this month’s show we have Jaguar Love, about whom Pampelmoose contributor Robert Ham has great things to say here. Also on the bill are Logan Lynn and DJ A-Train. And as always it’s a FREE show.

By Robert Ham. [Twitter @bob_ham]
Nomo @ Sunday @ Doug Fir Lounge
While the music writers and critics of the world try to parse out whether Vampire Weekend is honest in their approach to African pop, you should busy yourself with this fine group of gents from Michigan. Formed in the early part of the past decade, this sextet plays some of the best Fela Kuti-inspired Afrobeat you’re likely to find played by American natives. While they bring their upbringings as jazz and rock players into the mix, the heart of the group beats with the chugging, swaying rhythms of their plentiful percussion section and the buoyant back and forth of their horn section.

DJ Krush - Saturday @ Rotture
He touts himself on his MySpace page (or at least someone involved with his publicity does) as “one of the best hip-hop DJs”. Yet, one quick spin through his weighty discography and you’ll likely be saying the same thing. His work on the wheels of steel and as a producer have helped bring in such high profile collaborators as Mos Def, The Roots and Aesop Rock. But his musical chops have also earned him a place to perform alongside jazz/experimental icon Bill Laswell and Japanese avant garde trumpeter Toshinori Kondo. This night will likely see him tightening up his DJ chops for an upcoming event that will have Krush spinning for six hours straight. Prepare yourself accordingly for a long haul of deep grooves and lucid electronica.

Jaguar Love - Tuesday @ Holocene
The former members of the mighty Seattle group The Blood Brothers responded to that band’s break up by splitting up its musical personality. The gents who went on to form Past Lives took the sonic expansiveness, experimentalist leanings and low slung rhythms. But the boys who went on to create Jaguar Love kept the slinky sexiness that was always under the surface of many Blood Brothers tracks. Here, they’ve turned up the sensuality with the help of some curvy electro rhythms, taut guitar and keyboard antics and Cody Votolato’s straining vocals wriggling over the top of it all. Catch them now - for free, no less - in this cozy venue before the rest of the world gets a hold of them and you won’t be able to see them from the nosebleeds of whatever theater they’ll be filling up in six months’ time.

Read the entire article and see the slideshow at the Wall Street Journal here.

The Builders And The Butchers

I saw The Builders And The Butchers at the Sasquatch Festival this year and was amazed to see the audience spontaneously begin to sing along with the band. It turned out to be one of the best performances of the weekend. Buy Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well

When It Rains by The Builders & The Butchers

Alela Diane

Early this year Alela Diane delivered, To Be Still, a wonderfully elegiac follow up to her album, The Rifle. I reviewed it at the time. Although she moves to and fro between Portland and Northern California, we should claim her as our hometown girl, as there is no doubt she is moving steadily toward greater renown.
Buy To Be Still

White As Diamonds by Alela Diane

Ramona Falls

Brent Knopf steps out of his Menomena world to bring us a startlingly fresh solo album, Intuit, under the moniker Ramona Falls. The release was accompanied by an amazing video.
Buy Intuit

Russia By Ramona Falls

Lackthereof

For ten years or more, Danny Seim, also of Menomena, has been releasing his own work as Lackthereof. In 2009 Barsuk released a retrospective of his decade’s work. This is a must have collection that will help you catch up with the work of one of Portland’s more creative and experimental musicians.

Buy A Retrospective 1998-2008

Last November By Lackthereof

Nurses

I’ll let this music fan, who left a review of the Nurses album Apple’s Acre on Amazon, have her say:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best albums of 2009, August 10, 2009
By J. Marler “Trendkill” (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

“This is a truly one of a kind album. I’ve never heard music like this before, not even from their first album. It’s an absolutely beautiful album, my personal favorite tracks are Mile After Mile, Technicolor, Man At Arms, Lita, Apple’s Acre… I guess I should just list the whole album every song is 5 stars. I can’t help but dance and sing with every track. My favorite album so far this year.”

Buy Apple’s Acre

Caterpillar Playground By Nurses

Panther

This is Portland’s loss. A word from Kill Rock Stars:

We are very sad to announce that Kill Rock Stars artists’ Panther are calling it quits. They have scheduled their last show for Dec 20 at Rontom’s in their hometown of Portland, OR. It will be a free show to thank their fans and friends for all their support.

Panther started out at the end of the 20th century as a solo project for Charlie Salas-Humara, then of the noisy prog band The Planet The. His shows were legendary - his signature falsetto over blown out beats making a bizarre form of damaged r&b along with his insane Merge Cunningham inspired dance moves and crowd heckling made for chaos that (mostly) won even the most uptight crowds over. He released a few records in this vein on local Fryk Beat records and made an AMAZING video before adding drummer Joe Kelly to the band and signing to KRS.

Buy Entropy

Love Is Sold [Lips and Ribs Remix] By Panther

Bobby Birdman

I love this video from Bobby Birdman and Audio Dregs and Fryk Beat Records. Click the image to play.

Buy New Moods

Thao And The Get Down Stay Down

Thao and her band had a busy year. There was the new album Know Better Learn Faster as well as her participation with the Portland Cello Project. I’ve a feeling that she will go far.

Buy Know Better Learn Faster

When We Swam By Thao And The Get Down Stay Down

Tallymarks By The Portland Cello Project feat. Thao

Bladen County Records

Bladen County Records continued to support and promote great music.

Pickathon and MusicFestNW

And it was another good year for two of our best music festivals. Pickathon and MusicFestNW.

Dr Dog at Pickathon

Crowd at Pickathon

Tu Fawning at MusicFestNW

OPB and WOXY iPhone Apps

And where would I be without my OPB Music and WOXY.com radio iPhone Apps?

Matt Haimovitz - Thursday @ Doug Fir Lounge
This world-class cellist’s schedule for the year includes performances of Shostakovitch’s Concerto No. 1 and a concert at New York’s famed Alice Tully Hall. And a stop at Sam Bond’s Garage in Eugene. No, this isn’t your typical classical performance; it’s in-your-face classical fare, in a perfectly in-your-face setting. The 38-year-old cellist recently released a playful album called Figment, which puts his playing up against programmed beats, turntable scratches and Balkan-inspired melodies. The pieces were composed by some of the most interesting modern voices in American music, including Elliott Carter and Gilles Tremblay.

The Yummy Fur - Wednesday @ Mississippi Studios
Formed in the early ’90s and inspired by the thriving indie music scene in their native Glasgow, The Yummy Fur lasted seven glorious years, making a beautiful and often unhinged racket. They poked at the mores of modern society and baited the law enforcement with their lyrics, and tried their hand at all manner of musical styles - from scratchy, Fall-like punk to electro pop. They broke up 1999, leaving front man John McKeown plenty of time to form the power trio 1990s and two of his bandmates to achieve stadium filling stardom with their new outfit, Franz Ferdinand. The Fur are flying again, but only for a short while to drum up interest in a best of compilation that a U.S. label is threatening to release this year.

White Hinterland - Thursday @ The Artistery
There seem to be a lot of former folk-leaning singer/songwriters dabbling in electronic music these days (Laura Gibson, Bon Iver, etc.), but there aren’t any doing it more dreamily and engagingly than Casey Dienel. Working with band mate Shawn Creeden and producer Alexis Gideon under the name White Hinterland, Dienel’s lilting voice is served well by these icy futuristic soundscapes, chilling its internal warmth and saving it from wilting. And Dienel and her collaborators all do an incredible job with the musical end, fashioning danceable beats that never seem to resolve and letting long pings of marimba float into a pixelated ether.

Bladen County Records Showcase at MFNW from bangsandblurry on Vimeo.

RonToms is open as usual for adult beverages but we expect to kick things off at 10PM going through closing time. The first 50 people through the door get an exclusive limited edition Gang of Four Tommie Sunshine remix on 7″ vinyl.

Live performance times:

Boy Eats Drum Machine 10:30
Ume 11:15

TONIGHT!

Dead Confederate at SXSW from TruckerSpeed on Vimeo.

Ume at SXSW 2009 from TruckerSpeed on Vimeo.

Videos by Scott Carver. Check out The Penny Jam and Truckerspeed.