Music

“For me, music is a definite calling. I wrote my first song on piano when I was five years old,” says Genre, a Bend musician who is currently performing a mesmerizing mix of flamenco guitar interspersed with tributes to The Cure, Morrissey and Depeche Mode every Thursday evening at Tart Bistro. On these nights, Genre’s hands undulate across the neck of his Pedro de Miguel guitar the way a storm scatters over a field, brutal and full of beauty.
“True flamenco music has its own distinctive style of play and rhythms, which appeal if not for the simple fact that they are found nowhere else on the planet,” Genre says.

The opening song on All Eternals Deck (The Mountain Goats' millionth record) depicts brave young cowboys who must crawl till dawn in order to survive the abuse of vampires. As with all John Darnielle (the primary Goat) songs, this one is a complete story (with sentences, not just pretty words) and sets up an album revolving around survival. All Eternals Deck is probably most similar to the dark, metal band imagery of 2008's Heretic Pride, but the characters Darnielle presented on that album didn't survive. On Deck, Darnielle's characters surprisingly continue going despite being attacked, misread, surrounded by mundane circumstances, dumped or finding teeth marks on their neck.

How do you go from posing for pictures with an assault rifle, rapping about gangbanging and belonging to one of the most profane (yet pioneering) hip-hop groups of all time to a producer of family-friendly comedy? To get an answer, you'd have to ask Ice Cube, because he's done all of that.
The former N.W.A. member, who has also enjoyed a wildly successful solo career in the gangsta rap world, is somehow the same dude who served as producer for the family film Are We There Yet? and now is executive producer of the TBS sitcom of the same name. But this isn't to say Ice Cube has sold out. He really hasn't. In fact, his last album, I am the West, hit the streets last fall and was surprisingly awesome and a great throwback to the glory days of West Coast rap.

For the past decade, Jay Tablet (real name: Joseph Taveres) has been a key player in the Oregon hip-hop scene as half of Cloaked Characters, along with Rory Oneders. But now, Tablet is breaking out on his own with his first solo disc, Put It On The Tab.
Here, Tablet keeps the upbeat Cloaked Characters' vibe alive, but does venture out into his own stylistic territory, experimenting with more electronic and dance sounds than we're used to hearing from CC. The album features plenty of familiar guest rappers and vocalists, including Mosley Wotta, Caitlin Cardier and even an appearance by Madchild of Swollen Members, but Tablet manages to keep his stamp on the record by anchoring each track with his own swagger.