Rare Monk, Spirit Award at Bunk Bar

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BUNK BAR: Frog Eyes at Bunk Bar

Frog Eyes have made their last album. 17 years after their teetering debut, the Vancouver band unveils Violet Psalms?a giddy lament; a gnashing jubilee; a rain-drenched allocution on hope vs. horror, paradise vs. pride, Marx and Brexit and bad acid trips.

It's an ending like a beginning. "We were trying to pretend it was our first record," Carey Mercer says. This is their final record, Frog Eyes' last gasp?but the art-rockers wanted to capture the energy of a debut, the freedom you feel "when there's no expectation that anyone will actually listen." They made it at home, burrowing under the house where Mercer lives with drummer Melanie Campbell. The goal was to blot out the world, focusing on what they could grow down there, four musicians in a basement. Could they squeeze out ten songs? Was there enough paste in the tube to squeeze out 10? "In the end there was. Which is rad.?

No guests, no engineers. A self-invention. Violet Psalms began with its frantic, reverb-drenched guitar, squiggling over a modulation pedal. Next Mercer and Campbell concocted the drum parts?imagining them as onomatopoeia then recording them in fragments, kickdrum by kickdrum, tom by tom, with tailored effects. "The goal was to disorientate," Mercer explains, but also to work by instinct, gut?a cut-up of music and image, songs that coil back and kiss. The band pruned as they went, adding Terri Upton's bass parts, taking other parts away. Whereas past LPs used piano, Shyla Seller worked with shimmering synths?chords like bleeding watercolour, shadows casting on a wall.

Frog Eyes' music is indebted as ever to Bowie and Byrne, to glam and sheer cacophony. But there's some Cluster and Jon Hassell here too, and a little of Destroyer's Ken?which was being made close-by. The lyrics came last, "wedged in the spaces" after the rest had been recorded; Mercer's like a slapstick Scott Walker, a choleric Nick Cave. "All I want is a sign / all I need is a sign / that I'm sound of mind," he sings on "Don't Sleep Under the Stars". While that track is a meditation on rock'n'roll ("how tired I am of its corpse," Mercer explained, "and that I still love its little finger"), the album often tilts at even taller windmills: barbarism, socialism, late capitalism's death wish. "On A Finely Sown Sleeve" considers the thinking that led to Brexit, or to Trump?working people's hatred for each other, the oozing pathos of our pomposity. "Little Daughters" reflects on what will succeed these events?and whether our kids could save us, if they're taught the right lessons. (Mercer spends most days as a schoolteacher.) On "Itch of Summer Knees," the singer returns to his own childhood, remembering an episode when he was 13 years old, "almost homeless," an interloper at some acidheads' monstrous lakeside party. Here and everywhere, flashes of violence graze moments of reverie?wait for "Pay For Fire", the album's magnificent closer, rhyming hardship into beauty.

Even so, don't come looking for bromides. This band never made?and will never make?a music of big choruses, primary colours. These are torn portraits, unruly canvases?feverish, ludicrous, resplendent songs?each still somehow full of kindness. Violet Psalms is as much about Frog Eyes' friendship as anything else: their time as an adventuring party, chaotic good; the kind that bawls when gigs go wrong; the kind that's made so happy, so daftly happy, by making music. "It feels so cool to create something," Mercer says?a song, an album, 17 years of din. After burrowing in the basement, singing their violent psalms, the band's journey is nearly over. This band was a ring?a ring in eight parts. (This is its final gleam.)

BUNK BAR: Quiet Slang at Bunk Bar

?Rock and roll is sort of my consolation prize for wanting to have been a writer,? says James Alex. It?s a humble admission from the frontman of Philadelphia?s Beach Slang, a fiery punk quartet whose raucous gigs often find the songwriter?s earnest lyrics bellowed back at him. Still, consider it a feat that fans are even able to hear those words from behind the trembling walls of distortion that serve as Beach Slang?s raison d?etre. Everything about Beach Slang is loud, from the guitars to its attitude to Alex?s weathered rasp.

Considering that, there?s something almost cheeky about the title of his new project: Quiet Slang. As the name implies, Alex is embracing minimalism, smothering the fuzz in favor of a cello, a piano, and his voice. In October, Quiet Slang released We Were Babies & We Were Dirtbags, an EP comprised of two Beach Slang songs and two covers from The Replacements and Big Star. Consider it an introduction to what Alex calls ?chamber pop for outsiders,? because it simply serves as prelude to Everything Matters But No One Is Listening, a collection of 10 Beach Slang covers that comprises Quiet Slang?s debut fulllength.

The project?s seeds were planted just six months after Beach Slang?s formation, when Alex was asked to a solo Tiny Desk Concert for NPR. ?That was just me, my guitar and a clumsy excuse for charm. But, yeah, the response was beautifully unexpected and really nudged my thinking,? he says. ?Even now, at almost every show we play somebody?s like, ?I got turned onto your band from that NPR thing. You should make a record like that.?? A successful solo tour last year solidified the idea in Alex?s mind, but he says he wasn?t content to make a ?campfire record,? elaborating that he ?wanted it to have more weight than that.?

That?s when he turned to the project?s key influence: The Magnetic Fields? Stephin Merritt. Merritt?s influence lent itself not only in his heartrending use of cello and piano via his work with the Fields, but also in one of his most famous lyrics. ?Why do we keep shrieking/ When we mean soft things?? goes the final lines of ?100,000 Fireflies.? ?We should be whispering all the time.?

?That just always stuck with me,? Alex says, ?how quiet can sometimes be more powerful.? He continues, ?If Beach Slang is me fawning over The Replacements, Quiet Slang is me head-over-heels for Stephin Merritt.?

Though a new Beach Slang record is next up on Alex?s docket, he?s open to the possibility of more Quiet Slang. The project?s sophomore release, he notes, would contain original songs. ?I guess I wanted to chase reinterpretation first. I dug the challenge of it. But, yeah, Quiet Slang deserves its own voice.?

Regardless of its future, however, he hopes the project can convey one simple thing: ?Tenderness. I suppose that sounds overly simplified. But, still, it makes it no less sincere. Look, I?m trying to soften the world a little bit?there?s worse ways to be remembered.?

On Tuesday, July 10th
Honey Latte Presents:

The Emilys (garage rock)
www.soundcloud.com/theemilys
+ locals TBA

Camp Cope / Petal at Holocene at Holocene


Born in a backyard in over home job tattoos, Camp Cope ? Georgia Maq (vocals, guitar), Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich (bass) and Sarah Thompson (drums) ? have become a force in music since forming in Melbourne in June 2015.

Their newly released sophomore album How To Socialise & Make Friends anchors on the cycles of life, loss and growth through resilience and those moments of finding and being yourself. It celebrates the joys of being an independent unit and knowing who you are without any influence from external factors, and non-romantic love felt towards friends; the women who shape you and women working together to find strength in numbers. It has been praised by triple j (Feature Album), The Independent (4 stars), Vinyl Mag (9.5/10), All Music (4 stars) among others. The Guardian?s co-head music critic Andrew Stafford awarded the album 4 stars, saying, ?For a generation that?s grown up watching vocal talent quests, hearing the unrestrained gusto of McDonald singing these simple, direct songs will be empowering. In 20 years, young women especially will approach her and thank Camp Cope for encouraging them to pick up a guitar and tell their own stories. And so the baton will be passed, and picked up again.?

Led by the singles ?Lost: Season One? and ?Jet Fuel Can?t Melt Steel Beams?, their Australian Music Prize-shortlisted self-titled debut saw critical acclaim from all corners, including in SPIN?s best emo, top albums in Noisey (US), with Brooklyn Vegan naming them one of the ?Best New Bands? and DIY Mag exclaiming, ?it?s rare to find a band with the sheer songwriting ability and integrity of Camp Cope.? They sold out two shows at Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE 2017, before touring the US for the first time, playing through 13 states with Brooklyn band Worriers. Upon returning home they headlined Melbourne?s Weekender Fest and most recently headlined a huge homecoming show at Melbourne?s iconic venue The Forum.

In September 2016, Camp Cope together with bands and musicians from Australia and abroad united for the It Takes One campaign to say enough is enough: no more sexual and physical assault at shows. The campaign continues to drive conversation around safe spaces at shows, including the introduction of the safe spaces Hotline initiative at Laneway Festival.

21+ ? 8pm ? $12 advance ? $14 day of show

Mississippi Studios Presents:

Snail Mail and Bonny Doon at Holocene
Lindsey Jordan is on the brink of something huge, and she's only just graduated high school. Her voice rises and falls with electricity throughout Lush, her debut album as Snail Mail, spinning with bold excitement and new beginnings at every turn.

"Is there any better feeling than coming clean?" sings the eighteen-year-old guitarist and songwriter halfway through the sprawling anthem that is "Pristine," the album's first single. You can't help but agree with her. It's a hook that immediately sticks in your head-and a question she seems to be grappling with throughout the record's 10-songs of crystalline guitar pop.

Throughout Lush, Jordan's clear and powerful voice, acute sense of pacing, and razor-sharp writing cut through the chaos and messiness of growing up: the passing trends, the awkward house parties, the sick-to-your-stomach crushes and the heart wrenching breakups. Jordan's most masterful skill is in crafting tension, working with muted melodrama that builds and never quite breaks, stretching out over moody rockers and soft-burning hooks, making for visceral slow-releases that stick under the skin.

Lush feels at times like an emotional rollercoaster, only fitting for Jordan's explosive, dynamic personality. Growing up in Baltimore suburb Ellicot City, Jordan began her classical guitar training at age five, and a decade later wrote her first audacious songs as Snail Mail. Around that time, Jordan started frequenting local shows in Baltimore, where she formed close friendships within the local scene, the impetus for her to form a band. By the time she was sixteen, she had already released her debut EP, Habit, on local punk label Sister Polygon Records.

In the time that's elapsed since Habit, Jordan has graduated high school, toured the country, opened for the likes of Girlpool and Waxahatchee as well as selling out her own headline shows, and participated in a round-table discussion for the New York Times about women in punk -- giving her time to reflect and refine her songwriting process by using tempered pacings and alternate tunings to create a jawdropping debut both thoughtful and cathartic. Recorded with producer Jake Aron and engineer Johnny Schenke, with contributions from touring bandmates drummer Ray Brown and bassist Alex Bass as well, Lush sounds cinematic, yet still perfectly homemade.

The songs on Lush often come close to the five-minute mark, making them long enough to get lost in. The album's more gauzy and meditative songs play out like ideal end-of-the-night soundtracks, the kind that might score a 3am conversation or a long drive home, from the finger-picking of "Speaking Terms" to the subtle, sweeping harmonies and French horn on "Deep Sea." It only makes sense that Jordan wrote these songs late at night during a time when she was obsessively reading Eileen Myles and listening to a lot of slowcore and folk songwriters.

"Heat Wave" is one of the album's most devastating moments, a song that wallows in a crumbling mid-summer relationship. "I broke it off, called out of my shift, and just cried in my bathtub and wrote this song," Jordan recalls. "I was just so desperate to just get the way I was feeling out onto paper so that I could just have it and be done with it. It was almost kind of painful. It was like puking onto paper, and crying, 'This girl hurt my feelings!' Towards the end of writing the record, I became better at dealing with my emotions."

Jordan's personal crown jewel of the album, "Let's Find an Out," puts her childhood classical guitar training on display. It's a road song of sorts, a nod to feeling young and disoriented on her first ever tour: "I'd gotten knocked around a lot by the process. I was scared. It's sort of this love song about another person who is going through the same thing." "You're always coming back a little older / but it looks alright on you," she belts over her intricate playing, on one of the album's most pensive and gorgeous moments. Lucky for us all, she doesn't sound scared anymore.
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SNAIL MAIL
https://snailmailbaltimore.bandcamp.com/

BONNY DOON
https://bonnydoon.bandcamp.com/

serpentwithfeet at Holocene, presented by Mississippi Studios

With special guest Katie Gately

serpentwithfeet is an avant-garde vocalist and performance artist whose growing body of work is rooted in dueling obsessions with the ephemeral and the everlasting ? key components of his artistic journey from a childhood stint as a choirboy in Baltimore through his time at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied vocal performance before relocating to New York City. His forthcoming debut full-length album soil is a return to the sensibilities and wide-eyed curiosity of his musical youth before symmetry and sterile soundscapes ruled the roost. With the release of soil the chameleonic serpentwithfeet (born Josiah Wise) rediscovers and ultimately returns to the unhinged version of himself he was sure he had outgrown.

?soil is about me returning home then realizing that i carry home with me daily.?

Following the release of Blisters ? his 2016 foray into hybridized pop produced by Björkcollaborator The Haxan Cloak ? and two big tours, serpentwithfeet returned to the studio in 2017. There, he explored the fullness of his voice and became increasingly interested in playful singing which intrigued recording engineer Jason Agel. That vocal performance was only complicated by his feverish rumination on the dissolution of an impassioned love affair that left him stunned and speeding toward the inevitable ? a more intimate relationship with himself. One in which he embraces and mocks his own flaws with abandon, lets an uncharacteristic shock of hair down over his infamously provocative forehead tattoos, makes room for his most pressing sexual desires and returns to the gospel that dominated his formative years. In this embrace of imperfection and romantic failure, serpentwithfeet has found soil; the forthcoming album is his first release for the label partnership between Tri Angle Records and Secretly Canadian.

soil features contributions from rising experimental producer mmph, sound manipulator Katie Gately, A$AP Rocky contemporary Clams Casino, and Paul Epworth ? one of the Grammy Award-winning minds responsible for Adele?s critically-acclaimed album 21. The project recorded between New York City?s WhiteWater production house and Epworth?s London studio was co-produced by serpentwithfeet. On this outing he trades glossolalia and peacocking showmanship for intricately layered harmonies, a sumptuous bottom register that appears for the first time to challenge his fluttering tenor, and ballsy sonic experimentation encouraged by Gately, whose talent he describes as ?making voices sound like elephants and elephants sound like car engines.? Together they develop an unctuous sound that suggests billowing clouds and the dense, plodding stomp of 12-bar blues. Once concerned with perfect execution of gospel runs and dishing up a gossamer falsetto, serpentwithfeet is out of balance and reveling in the concept of mess on soil. Particularly, what it means to part ways with sterility and the urge to uncoil himself in order to occupy more space. soil is the moment at which he unfolds himself with zero intention of closing back up.

?I?mconstantly talking about how black men are always manspreading and pushed to be these super masculine, bovine ? seven foot niggas. For a long time I was interested in what would happen if we rebelled against that and we were small. I was into the minutiae and then I realized I wanted to take up space again. I have practiced that smallness and quietness and that?s fine, but now I don?t want to be that delicate. I?m not interested in that right now. This album definitely pushed me in that way. There?s a certain naivete in this new music. With the blisters EP, I was trying to prove a point to myself and the listener. I was trying to string together a lot of ideas before. This time I wasn?t trying to sound smart. I was as crafty as I could be with the words, but I just wanted to keep my eyes open and be accountable for what I was seeing .?


Evocative of the stillness of lying down and feeling the gravitational pull of the earth beneath the body, soil is a writhing, electronic melodrama that pairs synth woodwinds and sinister transitions with serpentwithfeet?s extra-terrestrial timbre. The album elevates his most persistent weaknesses, and revisits the trinity of r&b, gospel, and pop that drove earlier projects. serpentwithfeet busies himself with a manic range of emotion which includes sobbing, laughing, mocking his own truculence and identifying his proclivity to smother lovers as a trait antithetical to the kind of intimacy they seek. He speaks as tenderly to the mythical men of his dreams as he does former lovers. His humor is apparent on songs like ?seedless,? ?messy,? and ?slow syrup,? which poke fun at his overbearing presence in the lives of partners. serpentwithfeet tinkers with the extremes of his ideals to illustrate the ways in which past partners have felt oppressed by his needs; he likens them to unreasonable questions like, ?Will you show up for me if I ask you to sharpen your teeth because we don?t have any knives and I need someone to cut this food?? ?cherubim? and ?fragrant? elucidate the connection between romantic obsession and the sentiments of church songs about unwavering devotion to god in statements like, ?I get to devote my life to him, I get to sing like the cherubim.? In seeking to commune with a higher power across a number of bodies, from the individual self to the embrace of a lover and the sanctity of partnership, serpentwithfeet is responsible for a compilation that forces consciousness of the myriad intersections at which god exists.

At once whimsical and mechanical, soil traverses the depths of human emotion in search of love. The music inspired by ?intense collaborative work? is an extension of the mourning ritual a crestfallen serpentwithfeet first created to grieve heartbreak. He cites influences as varied as lullabies, an affinity for pungent body odor, his doll collection, and his mother?s love of traditional hymns. soil conjures his early fascinations with Brandy and Björk as easily as it references the pageantry of anthemic compositions by Antonin Dvorak and the ecstatic praise of the black church; the abiding prayer house rhythm is established by industrial washing machines on Gately?s opener ?whisper.? serpentwithfeet is explicit, however, in breaking with the condemnations of taboo subjects in order to deliver the language necessary to provide black, queer people with a heartfelt, futurist folk ?? a new mother tongue constructed to override his prolonged inability to articulate his love life because he had no knowledge of an established standard for speaking about intimate experiences beyond the binary lens of heterosexuality. In being vulnerable enough to vocalize his journey, serpentwithfeet encourages a systematic dismantling of the shame that is appended to homosexuality through the creation of a sonic space buoyed by radical acts of love and sustained repetition of his innermost thoughts.

?I remember growing up there was language for how men and women interact. I don?t have a lot of examples of black gay men that are out here thriving. Because of social media we see more examples but at the time when I was thinking about this and dealing with my own relationship, I had difficulty articulating my feelings. I hate to say it , but I think there is still a lot of shame around two black men dating and loving on each other and I was very aware of that. While working on soil, i was exploring and trying to make sense of my needs and my love language. Because of this process, I?ve fallen in love with my idiosyncrasies. I?m growing my hair again. With this album I gave myself permission to let the leaves grow, let the flowers bloom, let myself be hairy and let my sound be hairy. I?m excited about the way things naturally come out of my body. I am always going to embrace discipline and streamlining. But I?m in a space at the moment where I don?t need or desire the corset. It?s time for expansiveness.?

Portland "Saturday" Market, Yes, it's called the Saturday market but it's also on Sunday's. I play on a Sunday! http://www.portlandsaturdaymarket.com/

Hailing originally from a cave, near what is now called "The Atlantic Ocean", this troubadour has traveled the country singing songs for 5 years. His family-friendly, "not just for kids" approach to songwriting honored him with spots at some of the longest, continuously run music festivals in the country. His Americana blend of folk tunes from silly kids songs to heart felt, gritty tales of travel, invokes influences from Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Shel Silverstein, Raffi & Leon Redbone to Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Wilco, JJ Cale & Talking Heads.
https://www.reverbnation.com/CavemanDaveIsCool
www.facebook.com/CavemanDaveIsCool

The market isn?t just for adults!
We have a safe and friendly family atmosphere with many different monthly activities.
Sponsored by Portland Old Town Arts & Cultural Foundation these activities are FREE to the public.

March 4 Amazama- http://www.amazama.com/
April 21- SCRAP PDX
May 13- Portland Art Museum
June 10- Art ala Carte Mobile
July 1- Tears of Joy Theatre
August 5: Creative Roots
September 2- Dragon Theater Puppets & Princesses
October 14- Portland Children's Museum
November 25- Holiday Decor
December- Santa Booth