Sound Stories & Interviews

It wasn't until recently – Dinosaur Jr's 2009 album Farm, specifically – that I could even begin to understand J Mascis. Before that, he was just a gray-haired guitar god: a guru of geekery on the covers of Guitar World and other magazines I don't care about reading.

It's a Friday afternoon in New Orleans and Jeff Raines is taking it easy. Well, kind of. He's playing with some musicians that night somewhere downtown, but compared to earlier that week, things are pretty tame. You see, Raines is only two days removed from Ash Wednesday – three days from Mardi Gras – and given that he plays guitar in Galactic, one of the city's most hard-charging bands, it's OK that he's taking a little down time.
But there is no vacation on the horizon for Raines and his band. Within a week, Raines and the four other members of Galactic will be back on the bus for a month-long tour, doing what they've been doing for nearly 20 years – playing some of the funkiest instrumental jams in the business while also accompanying an eclectic array of performers, from rappers to soul legends. Then this summer, like most summers before in the band's history, the group hits the festival circuit, where Galactic's distinctively New Orleans roots mix well with the party atmosphere found at such mass gatherings.

When Dylan Carlson released Earth's first full-length, Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version in 1993, he and Dave Harwell took Sabbath riffs and deconstructed them into an unforgiving dragging force. This album would go on to spawn a legion of metal subgenres, most notably, drone metal.
After two decades, Earth 2 still inspires sludge metal minions and is beaming with a newfound hipster approval rating. If you're an original fan of Earth, I apologize. Even as a music obsessive, I struggle to make it through all three songs and 70 plus minutes of Earth 2. I can appreciate the originality, but the sub-tonal quality is too much for my head. I find myself gravitating toward Earth's most recent, non-metal affairs where Carlson's affinity for jazz, minimalist sound sculptures and slow Ennio Morricone compositions shine out.

Of all the things Tim Bluhm could be excited about, beer doesn't seem like it would be at the top of the Mother Hips front man's list. But on a Monday afternoon amidst discussion of the rootsy rock band's 20th anniversary, a forthcoming box set and a new studio record, he spends some time chatting about brewing.
The following day, Bluhm would be heading from his home in the Bay Area to Chico, the California college town where the Mother Hips originated, to visit Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. This is huge for Bluhm, a self-admitted beer fan, because the brewery is making a special beer for the band's upcoming Family HipNic music festival in Big Sur.

When you put out a cover of an insanely popular song – especially a beloved one that's been danced to at weddings and cried over after breakups – you're announcing yourself, in a way, to the world. And with Adele's cover of the Cure's “Lovesong,” the British girl that swept the Grammys in 2009 soars where so many others (311, Death Cab, etc.) have crashed.

There's nothing really Portland about Anita Robinson's voice, at least the one she uses over the phone. She speaks in a soothing drawl that's far more country rock than indie rock and reflects her younger days growing up in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. But if you put on a Viva Voce record, there's not much Southern influence to be heard – rather, the band's sound is a blistering combination of psychedelic rock coupled with a wide range of high-powered tones that sometimes wander into a folky realm.
While the Robinson's have found plenty of allies in the Portland music community, including Loch Lomond, with whom they'll share the Tower Theatre stage, along with Damien Jurado, on Monday night, Anita Robinson acknowledges that they're unique in their region of origin. And when they're on tour, they can still identify with the Southern culture.

The point of this review is this: Radiohead's new album is not a waste of your money. The King of Limbs is fine.
Yes, fine – because that's all it is. When you think about the grand scheme of modern music, purchasing a Radiohead record will never, ever be a bad thing. What you get from this band is always intelligent – no matter how much you've convinced yourself that Hail to the Thief was a bad record.