September 16th, 2011 – Pioneer Square Courthouse, Portland, OR MusicfestNW is a festival unlike most festivals, because most of it takes place indoors. Within the past few years, the good curators have added a stage in downtown Portland, or as...
Andrew Dinwiddie has meticulously recreated a live sermon by the evangelist preacher Jimmy Swaggart, recorded in Van Buren, Arkansas, circa 1971. In a remarkably fluent echo of the original (peppered with emphatic interjections, “Huh!”)...
September 15th, 2011 – Rotture, Portland, OR After sleepwalking through a night and a half of slick, mismatched suburban rock of MusicfestNW, the scent G-funk spilled forth through the weathered slabs of inner SE’s Rotture was like blood...
September 15th, 2011 – Dante’s, Portland, OR Alex Zhang Hungtai’s desert-dwelling, sunburnt Suicide jams didn’t really do much for me on his debut LP as Dirty Beaches, but the man’s set at Dante’s on Friday night...
September 15th, 2011 – Branx, Portland, OR Suuns — which, for the confused, and for me prior to MusicFestNW is pronounced “soons” — play exactly the kind of dark dancey art rock that works for me. The Montreal...
September 15th, 2011 – Holocene, Portland, OR I have eternally been confusing Twin Sister with Twin Shadow, and that confusion had led me to be less than interested in Twin Sister. Thanks to MusicFestNW, consider me relieved from my stifling...
tEEth’s Home Made begins with two lovers coddling blissfully beneath a stretched white fabric. Assisted by a flashlight and a hand-held camera, they explore one another by gingerly brushing skin, squeezing folds, and following contours. All...
Innovation is often born out of constraint. The core of TBA’s popular Ten Tiny Dances is the magic of making a lot from a little. Ten choreographers are invited to develop original performances designed for a humble four-by-four-foot stage...