I arrived a couple songs in Devon Williams' set, but I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it. 18th Dye set up pretty quickly and proceeded to play an awesome set. I had always been a fairly casual fan of 18th Dye. They struck me as enjoyable, if unmemorable, melodic indie rock. I sort of lumped them in with Sportsguitar.

But I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy their live performance. The drumming is superb. The dual guitars are impressively dense. Sebastian is perhaps not the most dynamic live performer, but Heike more than makes up for it by totally rocking out for pretty much every song. There wasn't much of a crowd, but everyone there seemed very excited and managed to coax them back out for an encore. They seemed pretty pleased that someone called out a request for a song off their new album ("Soft the Hard Way"). I'm fairly sad I didn't go seem them thirteen years ago, but hopefully I'll get the chance to see them again sooner than that.

I didn't really intend to go to this show, but it happened to fall on a night when my brother was in town. He and I hadn't been to a show together since Coachella in 2003, and he's an absurdly big hockey fan, so off we went.

We arrived for the last song and a half from Legion of the Fruit of Loom. They were slightly less annoying than their name might suggest, sort of a more metal-sounding, less jazzy Primus. Not really my thing.

Pure Country Gold were a two piece garage rock band. The drummer was fantastic, and the singer/guitarist was decent, but didn't have the kind of go-for-broke attitude I think a two piece garage band needs to really pull it off. I think you need a certain kind of craziness to do that properly. Even if, on record, you sound like the Oblivians, it's not a very engaging show if you just stand still and sing. The crowd seemed to dig them, though.

The Hanson Brothers certainly have their schtick down. The ref comes out first, provoking a wave of profanity from the crowd. The rhythm section comes out next, does some arguing with the ref, then the rest of the band comes out. Rob Wright does an impressive job in his idiot role, to the degree that he manages to maintain a steady string of drool from his lip throughout the entire show. Nicely done. It was an incredibly long set, but high energy, lots of things thrown back and forth between performer and audience. The schtick started to wear a bit, but nice for an old-timer like me to see guys significantly older than me still getting up on stage and acting like morons.

Since we were waiting for friends (and we had the tickets) we ended up watching Nodzzz from outside the club. Fortunately, Backspace has large front windows and poor soundproofing, so I don't think we missed out on much. I thought Nodzzz were excellent, and picked up their record.

Eventually we went inside. Backspace is an odd venue. I don't entirely get what it is most of the time. Coffee shop? Gallery? PC Gaming Joint? It's got a big counter, art on the walls, and (perplexingly) a treehouse directly in front of the stage. Not really an ideal space. Anyway, Vivian Girls set up, soundchecked, then left for a long while. Somewhat maddening. I'd missed them on their last trip through Portland, but my friends have been raving about them. This set was enjoyable, but not as life-alteringly good as I'd been led to believe. I guess they've become a little more polished than last time through, which just makes me regret missing them more.

Love is All did nothing for me at all. I was sort of iffy about their recorded material, but I had been holding out some hope that their live show was more engaging. It left me cold. And had far too much saxophone.

I feel bad saying bad things about bands, but I really don't understand the thinking behind having Graves play this show. I'm not a big fan of dinner jazz, so they're clearly not my thing, and I have no idea why someone thought they'd be a good band to open for BOAT and Aquaduct. Anyway, we spent most of their set outside, wandered off to get some drinks, etc., then went back in for BOAT. They played as a four-piece (with Ricky on guitar, sax, and keys), but this was probably the first time I've actually been able to hear the sax parts (most likely because I was standing about one foot from Ricky). It's a nice touch, and I look forward to hearing the sax-enhanced tracks on the upcoming album. Didn't stick around for Aquaduct, since it was late and I'm old.

We showed up just in time to catch the last half of the opening band's final song. Sort of too bad, as they sounded pretty decent, but they're local so I'll presumably have future opportunities to see them. Anyway, a fairly fun BOAT show. They managed to get nearly the entire audience on-stage for "Lately I've Been on My Back," which is perhaps the best song they've written to date. Again, not to second guess their business acumen, but seems odd to do a huge crowd-pleaser like that to close the set but not have it for sale. Perhaps they're just laying the groundwork for the next album...

Since the other show we were attending was showing signs of starting pretty late, we ducked out to catch Katy Davidson playing in someone's basement. When we got there Ash Reiter was playing. I have no idea how many songs we missed, but she went on for quite a while. Not bad. Very reminiscent of Jolie Holland. She seemed intent on playing endlessly though, which, given that we were under the impression the show was supposed to be over at 11 and she was still going strong at 10:50, made us a little grouchy.

Katy eventually chased her off-stage and began tuning, which turned into some guitar freestyling, which turned into her set. She did maybe four or five songs as a medley, mostly material I wasn't familiar with. She was apparently operating on about two hours of sleep, so seemed a little out of it, but still a pretty good set. Playing solo seems to keep her from doing the really lengthy psych jams that have occupied much of the last two times I've seen her. I'm debating whether to go see her again on Friday.

I was sort of on the fence about this show, given how lousy the sound was at Slabtown last time we went, but ended up going. I missed the first band, but the Brilliant Channel were profoundly boring. There was maybe one song that actually had a chorus.

Phil Wilson took the stage quickly and played what might have been a good set had I been able to hear anything. Slabtown's sound is awful and, since both vocals and all the backing tracks were going through it, everything just sounded muddy and thin. He had the Brilliant Channel come on to play backup for "In the Rain" which was significantly better than listening to Phil's ipod running through a crap PA. It's going to take a pretty impressive act to convince me to go to Slabtown again.

This was enough of a lineup that I pretty much had to drive up to Seattle to see the show. Drive up was easy, and I managed to find the Sunset Tavern without getting lost (amazingly). I arrived just before Fishboy started. I had been told earlier that it was just going to be a solo show, which almost dissuaded me, but it ended up being the full, four-person lineup. They opened with a couple of songs off Little D (including "Cheer Up, Great Pumpkin" which is one of my favourites), then launched into Albatross. I enjoyed seeing them perform Albatross in Portland, but seeing them do it with a four-person lineup in a club with good sound was incredible. I'm kind of amazed to say it, but they were pretty much the best band of the night.

I hadn't seen Tullycraft since the SF Popfest in 2003, so I was pretty excited to see them live. Sean seemed to be kind of bitter that anyone was there (since the Vaselines were also playing in Seattle the same night), but a pretty enjoyable set. Heavy on newer material, but I suppose that's to be expected.

BOAT were excellent. This was the first time I'd heard them do "Topps" live (since they had a couple other people to help out with vocals). I'm not sure it entirely makes sense to go on tour to support a single that's extremely hard to pull off live, but what do I know?

Weird venue. All ages venues appear to be phenomenally unable to generate revenue in Portland (I guess that's true everywhere, but seems especially dramatic here), so end up in some bizarre neighborhood. This one is in an industrial area by the rail lines, pretty much under the Marquam Bridge. I believe this is one of their first shows, and they seem a little disorganized (the door guy was denoting attendance by making marks on his arm).

Anyway, BOAT went on first, with Ricky playing with them for the entire set. Fun as always. They've been working in a lot of new material into their set; some of them (like "Lately I've Been on My Back") seem like a pretty significant departure, sound-wise but are excellent songs that get stuck in my head for days. Seems a little odd that they're not playing much off the new EP (or, alternately, that the new stuff they're playing isn't on the EP), but I'm sure they have a plan of some sort.

Crayonsmith went on afterward. I stuck around for a few songs, then realized they were boring and showed no signs of getting better so went outside.

This was, I think, AGSFB's second show as a trio. I'm not sure if they're trying to compensate for being fewer in number by being louder or if that's just part of the new sound. Between the distortion-heavy guitars and the non-functioning PA system, it wasn't really the most engaging performance I've seen, but perhaps I was just tired.

Fortunately, we were a little late, so only saw one song from Parenthetical Girls. They had a pretty ludicrous quantity of expensive video equipment surrounding the stage to document their performance, which consisted of three band members playing somewhat atonal droning on keyboards while the singer wandered through the crowd hitting things with a drumstick while placing his hands on people's heads. More than one song would have been painful.

Los Campesinos! took the stage some time later with a seven person lineup (drums, 2 guitars, bass, violin, keyboards, and vocals/xylophone). Show started off pretty well - very high energy and went over well with the crowd. So well, in fact, that some of the crowd started moshing. I can't remember the last time I went to a show with wildly inappropriate moshing - maybe it's making a comeback. Anyway, not a bad performance, but I think it's pretty much impossible to maintain that level of energy for a fifteen or so song set. By about two-thirds of the way through the set, I started to notice that virtually every song is pretty much the same sort of yelly vocals without a whole lot as far as melody goes. After their set, they returned for a particularly sullen encore; I assume they wanted more applause to draw them back.

I should also mention that they employed a bit of stage schtick I hadn't seen before. The singer periodically grabbed the back of the guitarist's head and pressed his face into the microphone. It was sort of uncomfortably violent and sexual, which may not be a vibe you want in your yelly dance party show, but what do I know?

I had some pretty serious concerns about Kelly's since A) it's downtown (so lots of suburbanites and little parking), B) the website brags about the quantity of motorcycles on the ceiling, and C) I had been warned it would be exceptionally smoky. Really, it wasn't nearly as bad as expected. I found easy parking right around the corner. The motorcycles (and most of the smoke) were in the main room of the bar, and the room with the stage was pretty nice. Decent sound, reasonable layout. No real complaints, aside from the smoke.

We arrived immediately after the first band, which seemed like excellent timing as BOAT was scheduled to go on second, with Minmae headlining. There was a last-second change, and Minmae (which wasn't actually the band, but just Sean Brooks) went on before them. I'm not particularly familiar with Minmae's work, but his solo material was not compelling at all. One friend commented it was reminiscent of Willie Nelson, which I can kind of hear, but is also kind of insulting to Willie Nelson.

BOAT took the stage quickly and proceeded to rock put on the loudest show I've heard them play. My ears were ringing for a couple days afterwards. This was the same lineup as we saw a few months back, but much higher energy.

Honestly, I find it kind of hard to keep writing up BOAT performances without sounding like a drooling fanboy. Also, it's hard to distinguish between different levels of awesome. Perhaps I'll just include the video that Curt shot and leave it at that.

What a weird venue. The top floor is pretty much an enormous open stairwell, with some tables and a bar around it. The downstairs is more tables and bar, all vaguely chi-chi with art on the walls and a general yuppie vibe. And then there's a door off the side of the lower level leading to a total dive bar space with a stage at one end. Very odd. Also heavily populated by people in black leather jackets.

Anyway, first band up was Fist Fite who were awesome. I'm always a sucker for bands who want to sound like The Screamers. Also bands who use telephones as microphones. The lead singer spent much of the set berating the rest of the band for being boring. And periodically making rude gestures at the crowd. And complaining about some show at Lewis and Clark College for which they didn't get paid. Outstanding. They also appear to have a diminutive, 50-year old superfan wearing a suit.

Panther was horrible. I made it about halfway through the first song, then walked out. I'd been warned in advance, but, even still, this was bad.

The Mae Shi were kind of odd. I mean, they were very good and sounded very much like I remember them, but, personnel-wise, it's almost entirely a different band. Only Jeff (the guitarist) remains from the band I saw a dozen or so times while living in Los Angeles, but, on the older songs, the vocals really didn't sound that different, which was very disconcerting. Ezra's delivery was pretty idiosyncratic, so having someone else mimic his cadences so well sort of made it feel like I was seeing a Mae Shi tribute band. The newer material was free of this problem, of course, so I was able to enjoy those songs without reservation.

I should also mention that the friend of the guy who shoved Eleanor at the Jens Lekman show (with whom words were exchanged) was also at this show. And once again, he was standing in the front row blocking the view of some shorter ladies. I don't know what his problem is.

Oh, also, the handoff to the headliners was outstanding. As usual, The Mae Shi ended with "Repetition," handing out instruments to various people in the audience. While they did this, the next band was able to set up and begin playing while The Mae Shi were still finishing. Very nicely done.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with the bands, the bartenders (at least in the dive bar portion of the venue) were surprisingly friendly and willing to tell me what they had on tap without sighing or sneering. I'm so used to hipster bar bartenders being openly hostile to patrons this was kind of jarring, but a welcome change.

I had fairly low expectations for Marla Hansen's set. What I'd heard online was all right, but didn't seem like it would be particularly engaging at a club. Given that, even for the opening act, Berbati's was already fairly crowded and noisy, it was worse than I expected. We were standing pretty much directly in front of the stage and could barely hear her vocals. She did, however, play a strummed viola, which certainly isn't something I'd seen before, so I guess she had that going for her. The bits of songs I could make out seemed pretty good. I'd happily go see her at a more appropriate venue with a more respectful crowd.

The Honeydrips were quite odd, but enjoyable. The entire backing track was on a laptop, but that didn't stop Mikael Carlsson from performing the entire set with a plugged-in guitar around his neck. He never played the guitar and, on occasion, played air guitar along with the pre-recorded songs. Not on the guitar, but about six inches above it. An odd choice, but perhaps not a bad way to offset the fact that you're essentially watching a karaoke performance. There was one particularly enjoyable bit when the bridge of the song contained a number of spoken (pre-recorded) questions, to which Carlsson replied with some exaggerated shrugging and nodding. After one song, he asked the crowd if his guitar (which he never played) was loud enough. Very odd, but pretty funny.

Long, long wait before Jens came out. At this point the crowd was insane. There was pretty much no room to move, but that didn't stop the guy who had previously been alongside the edge of the stage but had moved directly in front of us from deciding that this was a great time to go get a drink. After wedging his way out, he got a little forceful about shoving Eleanor in his attempt to get back in. Which led to words. Which led to angry glaring and me being in a bad mood for most of the show. Which is probably why I wasn't as impressed by Jens Lekman to the same degree a lot of people are. While I am impressed by the decision to have an all-girl backup band, it seems a little odd to feel a need to supplement the band with a laptop (especially to supplement the drums). It felt a little like cheating. So did the degree to which his live schtick seems to be lifted from Jonathan Richman's. The crowd seemed to eat it up, though, so maybe I was just crabby.

I wrote quite a while back on the main blog about last time we saw Casey Dienel perform at Doug Fir. I knew nothing about her, and we were mostly there to see Rose Melberg, but were completely blown away by her performance. She's got a new album coming out under the name White Hinterland, and her tour seems to consist of Portland, Boston, and New York. She opened the show with a Francoise Hardy song I didn't recognize, accompanying herself on ukulele, followed by a ukulele version of "Doctor Monroe." After those two, Laura Gibson came out and sang backup vocals on a couple songs, which was nice, but Gibson's voice is of a very different quality than Dienel's (as well as being significantly more powerful) so was sort of an odd pairing. Apparently, she does some singing on the White Hinterland album as well, so perhaps it'll come off better on album. Following those, members of Musee Mechanique took the stage and served admirably as the backup band. I only recognized one of the songs - I assume they're all off the new album - but that one ("Napolean at Waterloo") was the one she had played in her previous visit which completely floored me, so nice to hear it again (and find out the title). All in all, a very nice performance, though far too short.

I had been kind of dreading this show for a while - not because of Fishboy, but because the other acts were Eux Autres (of whom I am so sick) and the Gingerbread Patriots (who are not bad on record, but incredibly boring live). We were planning to go late to catch just Fishboy, but thought to call and learned Fishboy was going on first. Even better.

When we get there, Fishboy's just setting up to a largely empty room. On this tour, they're apparently playing their new rock opera in its entirety every night. Seems like that would get a little dull, but they certainly seemed to be enjoying playing it. The move into rock opera also seems to have unleashed their inner Who, as their live set now consists of Townshend-y windmill guitar playing and a drummer who is approaching Moon-levels of drumming frenzy. Unfortunately, Sweatpants (the keyboarist/trumpeter) wasn't on this tour, which made the sound a little less varied than on their album/last time we saw them.

Also not helping was the incredibly lousy sound system at Slabtown. Vocals were pretty much inaudible if the drummer was playing, which is a drag.

The high point of the evening came as we were chatting with Fishboy at the merch table (sadly, we were the only people at the merch table) and, as we were wrapping up, he asked if we'd see Eux Autres, who were just setting up. To which we replied, "Oh yeah, plenty. That's why we're leaving." He seemed to find that pretty amusing.

Despite some concern Boat wouldn't be able to make it down to Portland (since the 5 was closed due to flooding), they showed up with time to spare. And with a custom Trailblazers-themed banner. And Blazers-themed shakers for the audience to shake. Kind of an odd show, since Boat was going on first and didn't seem to have any audience crossover with the two local "headlining" bands, which meant there was a solid core of Boat fans (which was about 80% people I already knew) who promptly left following Boat's set.

This is the first time I've seen Boat with the new drummer. He's good, but the sound is dramatically different. Not sure if it's his drumming style or the actual drum set, but everything just sounded a little... I don't want to say "off," so I'll stick with "different." Sadly, their old drummer (who has now graduated to guitar and keyboards) wasn't able to come with them. I've seen Boat once before when he was untethered from the drum kit and it was fantastic, so I assume a full lineup should remove any problems I have adjusting.

Also, they played a new song ("(Do the) Magic Centipede"), which was excellent. They also closed with a Sleater-Kinney cover to complete the Portland-centricness of the set.

Since I didn't think I had any real need to see Eux Autres again, we showed up about an hour late for this show. Eux Autres hadn't started playing yet, so we sat around and watched their set. As usual, they opened with "Ecoutez Bien" and closed with "Le Project Citron," which are, admittedly, their two best songs. I said last time that I thought I really might like them if they cut their set in half, which is pretty much what they did. Maybe they should halve it again. Fifteen minutes would be just about right. There's something really offputting about their stage presence. It alternates between feeling like they've just had a fight moments before getting on stage and feeling like every (rare) comment is some kind of in-joke. I really don't look forward to seeing them again next month.

Anthony Rochester started off a little slow. The first few songs were accompanied by his iPod, which produced a full (if kind of muddy) sound, but weren't especially energetic. The set picked up some once the Hepburns took over as his backup band, but he really got the crowd worked up with his finale song, which was about social networking websites and needing a friend request manager due to the number of friends he had. The crowd (by which I mean, the other bands and the dozen or so civilians) loved it.

The Hepburns finally went on, but we were pretty exhausted by this point. We got a table right up front, which was great for the first two-thirds of the set. The band was clearly very excited to be on tour and, even though their songs aren't particularly high-energy (aside from "Tokyo Rollerball Cheerleader Chant"), the show was engaging and lively. Then a couple guys sat down behind us and started smoking heavily, while holding a heated discussion in Italian. After a while, we got tired of that, so moved to the padded bench seats in the back of the club. Very comfy, but less engaging and more sleep-inducing. Eventually, the Italians left, which meant the total number of people who weren't in bands, on the road with bands, or running the club came to about eight. By this point, I was exhausted and took off as soon as they finished playing.

We arrived a little late, but I don't think we missed more than a song, since they were still working out monitor levels and such. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I started listening to Saturday Looks Good to Me years later than everyone else, since they were initially on a lousy emo label. I know there are a lot of people who really dislike Fred Thomas' voice and much prefer the songs with female vocals (which is mostly everything until recently, at which point it's become about 50-50). Those people would probably be disappointed, since Fred was the only vocalist in this particular lineup (which was him, plus a bassist, drummer, and keyboardist). They'd be further disappointed as the set list consisted pretty much of all the songs on Fill Up the Room that he sings. Generally, pretty good renditions of those songs, except that he kept messing around with a little sampler unit mid-song. I'm not entirely sure what he was going for, since the samples just sort of sounded like random noise and, as far as making a fuller sound, didn't really balance out the loss of guitar and vocals (even when he used a sampler pedal to loop a guitar piece). Not a bad show, and it was free, so I'm not going to complain.

We showed up at Holocene around 11 or so and successfully managed to miss the first two opening acts. I can only speculate, based on the makeup of the crowd, that we missed some kind of horrifically terrifying hippie band. Euros Childs was just getting started and was playing "Henry a Matilda Supermarketsuper" when we arrived. Most of the crowd was standing off to the edge watching like normal people, but there were about 8 hippies in the middle of the dance floor flailing about like idiots. One of them was doing that stupid "spinning around with arms extended like a toddler playing airplane" dance. At one point they formed a kick line. Nothing bothers me more than having to watch people I hate enjoying themselves. Perhaps I should work on that.

Anyway, Euros Childs was okay. I'm not sure why he thought doing a 16 minute mini-opera consisting of slow-paced ballads was a good addition to his live show, but that pretty much killed any momentum the show might have had.

David Kilgour wasted little time in setting up. This is the first time I've seen him with this lineup (I've seen him twice with Hamish and Lisa backing him up, once with the Clean proper, and once with Lambchop), and, while they were certainly decent and competent, there was something a little too musician-y about them. I'd much rather have energy than competence. Things picked up somewhat for the encores when Kilgour led the band into their first time attempting "Tally Ho." Fortunately, there's not much to "Tally Ho" aside from the riff, so it came out well. He closed the set with a solo rendition of "Hold Onto the Rail," which was quite nice.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that, between every song, there was a young woman who felt a need to shout out things like "I love you, David," "My love for you is totally unironic," and "You are the greatest songwriter from New Zealand ever!" Kilgour mostly ignored her, but the backup guitarist seemed very amused.

We arrived at the show about 30 minutes before doors were scheduled to open. We hadn't previously been to the Aladdin, but I assumed that since it's not an overly large venue and since Yo La Tengo was billing the show as "a little bit Unplugged", sitting up close would be a good idea. We ended up being about sixth in line, but surrounded on both sides by middle-aged show tapers. I don't really understand the taping subculture, but they spend thirty minutes comparing gear, mic positions, etc. It was not a pleasant wait. Once the door opened, the older taper (who looked like a typical 60 year old Deadhead type) started elbowing people aside to get to his prime taping position. We decided to sit away from these clowns, so grabbed the first-row seats on the side which weren't as close as the temporary seats in the middle, but were far enough away that we could see the band instead of the monitors.

The opening act had been previously billed only as "very special guest" but turned out to be M. Ward. I'm not a huge M. Ward fan, but his stuff is pleasant enough and he is a very impressive guitarist. He also made use of a digital sampler to record loops live, which is apparently all the rage these days (by which I mean he's now the second person I've seen play solo with the assistance of one of these in the past year or so). He played a very short set, which was fine.

Yo La Tengo didn't take long to set up and started in on their set promptly. This tour is being billed as "Storytellers"-esque, which Ira disputed, since they didn't intend to tell stories or explain anything about the songs. Still, they played mostly acoustically and took questions from the audience which led to a very mellow and pleasant show. Fakebook is one of my favourite Yo La Tengo albums, and this set sounded about as close to that as I could hope (even including several songs from that album). Of course, encouraging a crowd to yell things out to the band encouraged the sort of idiots who like to yell out song requests repeatedly to do so to an even greater degree. Ira was surprisingly good at handling annoying shouters from the crowd. They played "Nuclear War" which elicited some chuckles. They ham it up quite a bit on that song, so I don't think laughing is entirely out of order, but some guy took offence and shouted out "Nuclear war is hilarious!" when the song ended. When he got back the "No, I don't think so" response he was hoping for, he replied with "Neither do I!" Ira explained that he thought the song was a little goofy so didn't see anything wrong with people laughing at it. Or, he said, maybe they're all "douchebags." Seemed to shut the guy up.

They also repeatedly refused requests for songs they didn't want to play, but did take a lot of requests. I was kind of surprised at the songs people requested. One chance to get Yo La Tengo to play a song, and you choose "From a Motel 6"? Really? Also, who are these people applauding when they announce "Now we're going to play something from And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out"? Am I the only one who found that album profoundly disappointing and largely uninteresting?