OMN’s 2010 PDX Pop Now! picks: 3 days of free, local, all-ages indie music

Catch Hockey close down Saturday night's festivities

The 3-day, all-ages, free 2010 PDX Pop Now! festival kicks off this weekend at Rotture. Held every summer–now seven years running–the fest has grown into a 3-day event featuring 48 local, Portland acts from July 30th, 31st and August 1st.

The festival combines artists from all genres in hopes that you will show up to see one band but discover another piece of stupendous local talent on one of the two stages–indoor and out.

OMN is here to help you navigate 3 full days of music by giving you our picks. (Contributors include Mike Acker, Brandon Ellison, and Chris Young.)

Stay connected over the weekend with live updates from Rotture and photos on OMN’s PDX Pop Now! page.

The complete schedule is listed at the end of the article.

Friday, July 30

Blue Horns (Playing inside at 6:00 pm): Blue Horns may have usurped The Shaky Hands’ claim to Portland’s jangle-pop throne. This is sunny, summer music–twangy guitar, pop-punk drums, and the warble of Brian Park’s Jello-Biafra-vocals. Blue Horns has the kind of loose, lazy, ’70s sneer that Kings of Leon captured so well early in their career.

http://www.vimeo.com/5338435

AndAndAnd (Playing inside at 9:30 pm): One of Portland’s indie bands getting plenty of positive ink, AndAndAnd’s debut record We’ll Be Better Off With The Plants has been called “fantastic,” and filled with “junky pop gems.” AndAndAnd’s second album, A Fresh Summer With AndAndAnd (available now), has also gotten early raves. Mike Harper of PDX Pipelane said, “Dance to it, fall over to it, get hit in the face by it. A Fresh Summer With AndAndAnd promises to be an active soundtrack for summer mischief.”

Tu Fawning (Playing outside at 11:35 pm): Corrina Repp’s sultry voice–accompanied by Joe Haege’s tremoloed guitar and Portishead-esque samples–gives Tu Fawning’s music the dark, haunting vibe of a Prohibition-era jazz lounge. Check back for a full profile on them tomorrow.

AU (Playing outside at 12:15 am): Since 2005, multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland has been creating gorgeous, experimental pop under the moniker AU. The band is now a full-time duo with drummer Dana Valatka, and the two combine bluesy slide guitar, keyboards, loops, and intricate percussion to create sweeping walls of sound. The duo sometimes swells to double digits when performing live, and for this year’s fest Luke Wyland says:

This performance is a special one for us as our friends in the band the Dovekins (from Denver, CO) are coming up to re-stage a performance we collaborated on for the Communikey Festival in Boulder, CO this past spring. So along side the usual of Dana Valatka and I, we’ll have 5 other members on stage with us to flush out our songs to their full potential. Gonna be a special one for sure.

Dovekins’ experimental chamber-folk promises to be the perfect addition to AU’s intricate, joyous pop.

http://www.vimeo.com/9318284

More from Friday: Prolific experimental, improvisational, psychedelic noise benders Jackie-O Motherfucker (playing outside at 10:55 pm).

Saturday, July 31

Grey Anne (Playing inside on Saturday at 4:10 pm):

Singer/songwriter Grey Anne mixes many unique musical elements to achieve her sound, which she says is influenced by diverse sources, from show tunes to old Liz Phair. Her long-awaited debut record as Grey Anne–Anne Adams the woman behind the name has been around Portland for the last few years playing with other bands and solo under different names–Facts N Figurines has garnered many positive reviews. The Oregonian compared her to both Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd and Cat Power in the same sentence. The Portland Mercury said that Facts N Figurines gives the “mental satisfaction akin to completing a crossword puzzle.” Watch “Alberta Street” with Grey Anne on uke:

Operative (Playing inside at 5:30 pm): “Pulse” is an appropriate name for an Operative song as the minimalist music drones and builds in instrumental intensity and complexity (only to recede again) throughout the 12 minutes of the track–a track which is featured as the B-side to their debut 12-inch EP. (Listen to “Pulse” below.) Scott Goodwin initiated the group after failing to perform “Ramp” (the A-side of the EP) live by himself. The quartet made up of Spencer Doran (electronic drums, samples), Jed Binderman (drums), and Alex Neerman (electronics) explores psychoacoustic theories–the study of subjective human perception of sounds–on and off stage. The result is a lively quartet on drums and homemade electronics making intriguing music that roams from simplistic to intricate, repetitively oozing with intuitive transitions.

Wampire (Playing inside at 8:20 pm): Salem bred, PDX embraced, feral indie rockers Wampire will shed clothes, shred guitars, and moan airily to glitchy loops and drums. The trio of Rocky Tinder, Eric Phipps, and Cyrus Lampton were recently part of the six-way split vinyl PDXTC, but you can expect a spastic, energetic set replete with appetizing outfits and crass behavior when these three take the stage.

Joggers (Playing outside at 11:45 pm): Part of the old guard of Portland’s local scene, Joggers have been making the rounds since 2001. Making their debut as Joggers–they were once known around town as Stateside–in 2003 with the record Solid Guild (listen on Bandcamp), Joggers have gone on to produce five more albums, including two 7-inch pressings in 2009. Both releases were splits, one with Pan Tourismos and the other with Oxford Collapase. Joggers, currently a four-piece, mix elements of math rock and pop to achieve a unique sound that should be familiar to any Portlanders that have been around the club scene in town.

Hockey (Playing outside at 12:25 am): Portland’s favorite new wave, dance-rockers will close down Saturday night. Read the OMN interview with bassist Jeremy “Jerm” Reynolds and watch their latest video for “Song Away.”

More from Saturday: Bombastically thumping, noise dumping ASSS (playing outside at 6:55 pm) on the drums and more drums.

Sunday, August 1

Michael The Blind (Playing inside at 12:40 pm): On his online bio, Michael Levasseur, aka Michael The Blind, says he “chose to make music a central pursuit very early in life.” Having been around the country many times and played in all different types of venues, Michael The Blind has a lot to offer the local music scene. Inventing his stage name honestly, due to extreme nearsightedness, and as a context for the types of songs he sings–“blindness as a central metaphor,” according to his bio–Michael The Blind has recorded two full-length records, 2006’s Secrets & Lines and 2007’s Names & Numbers. Michael The Blind recorded his second album at The Bunker, the now closed studio in Northeast Portland, and played almost every instrument on the album. Check out “All & More”:

Cloudy October (Playing outside at 2:05 pm): The name Cloudy October doesn’t immediately scream hip-hop, but that’s who Cloudy October is, and his name may soon become just as well known as some of the more popular MCs that roam the Northwest. Cloudy October’s debut release, 2010’s The Aviator Is Dead EP, is more than an introduction to his sound, which Cloudy October describes as “LL Cool J giving play-by-play commentary of Freddy Krueger and Edward Scissorhands in an arm wrestling match.” Cloudy October rhymes with more than a little bit of Aesop Rock and with inventive beats that would be at home on any MF Doom record. Check out “Two Rude Dudes”:

Lewi Longmire (Playing outside at 3:25 pm): Read the recent OMN interview with roots-rocker Lewi Longmire.

Billygoat (Playing inside at 5:30 pm): Billygoat is the multimedia experience of artists David Klein and Nick Woolley uniquely shared with their bemused audience. They’ve meticulously recreated dream-like sequences using stop-motion animation and added a live soundtrack where violin bows run over electric guitar strings and harps are plucked alongside other homemade instruments, all looped, sequenced, and synthesized into a calmly enveloping soundscape. The visuals and sounds wrap around your mind and body while anti-performers Kline and Woolley bask in the darkness at the side of the stage, manipulating the fantasy like aural puppeteers.

http://www.vimeo.com/5774947

Please Step Out of the Vehicle (Playing outside at 6:15 pm): On their MySpace page, Please Step Out of the Vehicle tag themselves as “PDX LO-FI.” This may be an understatement. PSOOTV’s sound is the kind of messy, DIY, basement-tape pop pioneered by Daniel Johnston and last heard sometime in the ’90s. But there’s heart and intensity in Travis Wiggins delivery; an infectious sense of urgency. It’s stripped-down and punky, but they’ve been known to bring a Neutral Milk Hotel-worthy cast of characters onstage. Their schedule is erratic at best, so this is the chance to catch them.

Ben Darwish (Playing outside at 7:35 pm): PDX Pop Now! has never ignored Portland’s thriving Indie Jazz scene. The Blue Cranes are a PDX Pop Now! fixture. Matter of fact, the Andrew Oliver Sextet played at City Hall for the festival launch as well as in last year’s festival. This year’s fest will serve as the debut of Duo Denim with Ben Darwish playing Rhodes and another keyboard with some pedal effects. His partner will be drummer Drew Shoals, back in Portland from Philly where he’s in law school. Darwish promises they’ll be “louder than normal and maybe a bit more raucous.” It’s just the two of them but, according to Darwish, “It might feel like four.” Darwish is always worth hearing. You should seize the opportunity to go see Shoals.

Get Hustle (Playing inside at 8:20 pm): The three-piece Get Hustle play a type of music that is self-described as: “It could be called free-jazz or free-rock, only it’s not jazz or rock; it’s just free.” The vocal aspect of the music is mostly chant and shout downs, the latter comparable to the same technique used by one of the progenitors of punk rock: The MC5. Get Hustle’s MySpace bio comes with a disclaimer: “I won’t promise you’ll like them, because their music…it’s not even music to a lot of people. But to those of us who see the light shinning out of it, it’s the best thing ever.” For people who like punk rock, and music described as sounding like “apocalyptic rainbows,” Get Hustle might just be the act for you.

Reporter (Playing inside at 9:40 pm): On the verge of releasing a new album, space-y disco dance clubbers Reporter spoke with OMN last week and dropped off their new track “Click Shaw” (below).

Hosannas (Playing outside at 10:25 pm): Formerly Church, one of Portland’s beloved avant-pop collections Hosannas released a new album, Then & Now & Then, on May 11, which features re-releases of their first two EPs and a few new tracks. OMN interviewed them earlier this summer, but since then Lane and Cristof have left to pursue other projects. Brandon and Richard Laws are continuing on, and a new Hosannas full-length is rumored to be dropping later this year.

Typhoon (Playing outside at 11:45 pm): Voraciously tearing through Portland since the release of their second album, Hunger and Thirst (read the OMN album review), Typhoon’s 12-piece strong orchestra of folk effervescence and emotion brings a phenomenal live show. Horns and strings, guitars and shakers adorn the stage, scattered betwixt the energetic bodies as they travel through tracks like “Starting Over (Bad Habits)”–the opener on the new album, which was also selected for the 2010 PDX Pop Now! compilation CD. Listen below and read a live review here.

More from Sunday: Breezy, melodic, experimental pop from Aan (playing inside at 9:00 pm) and baroque pop with multi-instrumentalists Parenthetical Girls (playing outside at 11:05 pm).

The complete 2010 PDX Pop Now! lineup: