Upcoming/Recent Shows

King Hannah in Portland last night was...enjoyable. Most of it, anyway. The turnout was the worst out of all concerts I've been to this year. By the time King Hannah took stage, there couldn't have been more than 60 in the audience.

Ezza Rose

Americana/indie rock musician based in Portland! She was enjoyable enough, her vocals were the highlight of the performance.

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King Hannah

Their set contained most of their excellent debut record from this year, and a few cuts from the EP. I enjoyed the performances, but given the slowcore and dreamy timbre style of their music, I was sort of tuned out at times around the halfway point.
I also noticed at least five people left the set prematurely, very sad to see on top of the poor turnout. Many of the audience members were talking over the band to someone adjacent throughout the set. In one particular bad case, some lady sitting down on the far left side of the venue was talking so obtrusively loud (not sure who to) right before KH announced the last song. During the in-between banter, Hannah herself had to remark "Wow, she's pretty loud, isn't she?" We all got her to shut up, thankfully.
No encore. Hannah headed over to the merch table immediately after the last song finished.

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Video of the opener "A Well-Made Woman." You can hear that crowd chatter I mentioned, fairly distracting. The song itself is a nice blend of influences, notably PJ Harvey, Portishead, and Mazzy Star:



Post-Show

Over 3/4 of the audience ambled towards the exit staircase, while a few waited around near the merch table (including a couple that came through the doors a few minutes after I did). The couple in front of me got a shirt and the new LP, and while Hannah was looking for a marker to sign the LP at their request (and couldn't find one), I offered mine for her to use for them and the LP I also subsequently purchased.
I had Hannah sign and personalize. Had a brief convo with her, and mentioned being thankful she visited Doug Fir here. Despite the concert being just OK from my experience, I would still see them again in a future tour.
I headed out the doors, and got to about two blocks down the way before I heard my name faintly behind me getting progressively louder. I looked around bewildered at first, then turned around to see that it was Hannah chasing me down because, like a dummy that I am, I left my credit card that I used to pay for the LP on the merch table. She returned it to me and I was just completely at a loss of words for how nice of a gesture it was for her to get this to me. Almost the second time I've lost my CC in less than seven months.
I'll make sure to buy extra merch for next time, definitely a shirt at the very least.

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EDIT: grammar fixes
EDIT 2: repeated word
 
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Last night was the final night of Kendra Morris supporting Neal Francis, and man, what a fantastic night of music! Kendra is just a powerhouse singer and has an amazing stage presence.

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She was also kind enough to sign my record. It was great meeting you @KendraMorris - bummed that our selfie didn't turn out!
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And Neal Francis - wow. I haven't seen him in 2.5 years but he has become an even more dynamic performer than before. The songs from the new album translate so well live, very stoked to have seen him again in such a small
room before his inevitable blowing up.

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threesunrises said:
Went to see Goose on Fri and Sat nights in Philly. I love the Fillmore, but it was insanely oversold, especially on Fri night. Great shows, so much fun! Was shocked to get "This Old Sea" last night, one of my faves, we last saw it at Fred Fest in Virginia last September.
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Thanks for highlighting Goose. I remembered this and we chose to go to their set at Boston Calling. I don't think this will be our last Goose show. They are fantastic jammy goodness
 
waruv said:
Thanks for highlighting Goose. I remembered this and we chose to go to their set at Boston Calling. I don't think this will be our last Goose show. They are fantastic jammy goodness
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Glad you enjoyed them! They are so great, and I'm not a jam band fan per se.

A friend posted some video clips in his IG story back in fall 2019, and my husband was intrigued. That led him to their performance at the Peach Festival in 2019 which is truly epic. I can recall him watching it on youtube on the fam rm tv, I was in the kitchen and was blown away by what I was hearing in the next room.

We've seen them 9 times since then (missed out on the early 2020 shows in small rooms thanks to covid) and had tix for Radio City, but then Midnight Oil announced their tour dates, and there is no way we're missing what is most likely the Oils last ever US show. So I sold our Goose RCMH tix, but did pick up single day passes for this year's Peach Festival. It seems fitting that will be our 10th Goose show.

They have exploded in the past 2 years. It makes me a bit sad to know that we had the chance to see them in a room of 300 but covid ruined it. They are only going to get bigger.
 
I had surprisingly won free admission to the Men I Trust show at Club Volta in Cologne last Friday. The club holds about 450 people. Due to great demand Men I Trust did two shows the same day at that place, one at 6 pm and the other at 9 pm, which was the one I had won. So upon arrival there was a long queue. However, we've been in finally and the atmosphere was quite relaxed, it didn't feel too packed.

Support had been the Dutch singer Luwten. Due to the long waiting time I had missed the most part of their set, but the songs I've heard sounded quite interesting.

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Men I Trust had been really wonderful. The sound was amazing, both close to the stage as far away. They played several songs of their recent album called "Untourable Album" (well not really), great enjoyable songs that go into the dream pop direction. The audience was partly a bit annoying as there was some loud talking here and there while songs were being played, but what can you do. Really great performance, I recommend catching them if they're nearby your place. At the end I've bought a vinyl copy of their 2019 release "Oncle Jazz", a double album at the merch stand. Hard to get over here. So it was a great evening.


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Very late in posting, but Jenny Hval visited Portland last Saturday and put on a wonderful performance! Firmly cemented why Classic Objects is an upper-echelon record of this year.

Discovery Zone

This opener was interesting; performing a fun mixture of synthpop and vaporwave.
For one song, she was even sprawled across the floor while speaking some bizarre spoken word dialogue...never seen anything like that before in a live setting. She had another member come on board roughly halfway through the set, a saxophonist who provided that necessary vaporwave element.

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I have it on decent authority that Patricia Wolf is also a Jenny Hval fan and was at this show! She took professional photos for Holocene to use for their IG page.


Jenny Hval

A beautiful set full of wonder and cute, amusing in-between song chatter. Set ran about ~70min including an encore of two songs.
She performed seven of the eight tracks from Classic Objects sans "Year of Sky." She performed a few other tracks from older records as well, thankfully "Ashes to Ashes" included among them. Jenny even performed an adorable track about a dog that she had adopted during the pandemic, not available on any of her prior works! ❤️ At some point in Jenny's wisecracks and between song commentary, she mentioned that she avoids retreading to older songs in live sets, as they get somewhat "stale."
The visuals in the back were really neat and charming including a segment during the amazing "Cemetery of Splendour," with multicolored explosions and spatial geometry. A disorienting one followed with a POV from a dog (I assume Jenny's) running in a snowy Oslo, as the dog had changed pace several times and the camera moved wildly in all directions.
Great show though, and I hope to see her again.

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Post-Show

Unfortunately, we had to leave immediately as there was a late event scheduled to take place in just under half an hour (I think a late-night party with a slew of DJs?). Couldn't get my Classic Objects and Menneskekollektivet jackets signed. 😞 I find it frustrating that Holocene, despite my liking of the venue, schedules events three hours apart from each other quite often for early shows.
 
I had a similar Boston Calling experience with the Friday/Sunday combo although we stayed a bit out of the crowds for some personal reasons and missed Saturday due to the weather (it stung to miss Orville/Pumas as well as Celisse/Kennyhoopla and some of the local artists I wanted to check out). Couldn't turn down the super cheap third party prices. We admittedly left when the headliners went on - I know NIN and Metallica are well loved and apparently did great, they're just not my musical jam and we have a lot going on at home right now.

Friday:

Due to commute times we only got to see two sets. It seems we missed a real winner with The Struts and Paris Jackson doing her own performance and joining The Struts and Cheap Trick on stage too.

Haim: It's kind of surprising how much they've evolved as live artists over the years. I saw them solo once and at BC once but it was over half a decade ago at this point. Substantially more confidence on stage now with more diversity in terms of splitting vocals and instrumentation. That was really nice to see. Their stage banter is also much enhanced (some skits that could...use work and a lot of good facing out to the crowd) with a harder edge than their indie-pop roots. It was a really good performance overall though.

Avril Lavigne: This one has some divisive feedback. I personally thought it was a little off - I think she may have been struggling with either her illness or maybe travel lag. The hits felt a little low energy and she needed to run off the stage for a few minutes twice in an hour set. However the crowd loved her and she seemed really appreciative. The track with her beau Mod Sun was a highlight and when she was into it it was quite fun.

Sunday:

We popped in around 3, just in time for Peach Tree Rascals. This is the first of a couple strong recommendations of a band I was not familiar with prior to Sunday. I think they have a pretty good Tiktok following for one of their songs (Mariposa) but they were a bundle of fun on stage. They gave off fairly big Rex Orange County vibes as a collaborative group and all of their tracks were jams. Pretty strong recommend for a vibe heavy, laid back musical session

Then we functionally camped out at the Blue Stage. Japanese Breakfast's set was really tight in a great way: the number of shows they've done really plays out positively and she got a really big crowd for a 4 PM set on a day headlined by Metallica. She was also wandering the fest afterwards - given she is playing pretty much every fest in the country this year I hope she doesn't wear down but this was a real treat and one I was looking forward to.

My big surprise set of the fest was Ripe. They are a Boston based but going national funk/groove act of Berklee students. An absurdly fun, groovy, well constructed set. I strongly recommend that if you are in the business of liking acts like Lake Street Dive, The Dip, etc. that you give them a good listen. A slew of fun Bandcamp sets, some studio releases, I get the feeling they should be a cult fave for a long, long time if they keep it going.

Goose has been well documented here, they're great for the right listener. I'm not quite sure how to describe them, a very technically precise and sound jam band experience? Really fun way to close the night away from the insanity of the other side of the fest.

Outside of the weather, the only other main bummer as that one of the three stages (the Red Stage) had constant sound issues the entire weekend. If you weren't in the first 20 rows it was very difficult to hear most of those acts (Modest Mouse, Weezer, and Cheap Trick I experienced or heard reported, even part of RTJ). It was amplified on Sunday by the Metallica fans who were, uh...not there for Weezer or Modest Mouse but expanding to take up that crowd space. I hope they can fix that for 2023.
 
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Caught the Steely Dan / Snarky Puppy tour over the weekend, and was very underwhelmed. I think the big problem for me was that everything was so homogenized. For a jazz ensemble, Snarky Puppy seemed too arranged and orchestrated. While you'd expect that with Steely Dan given how much of a studio project they were, the arrangements and vocal delivery was missing that sting / sarcastic edge I associate with Steely Dan. Their drummer was awesome, but everything else just fell flat for me.
 
So yesterday I've been to the Charli XCX show in Cologne. It was held in the Carlsberg Victoria Club that holds about 1600 people and was either sold out or nearly sold out. A huge part of the audience was belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, me too of course, which was nice to see. It's great to see how music always brings people together.

Support was female Canadian singer ELIO, who did some very energetic pop songs and got the crowd going. Great support.

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In between support and Charli XCXs performance songs by Charli XCX were played, partly unreleased ones.

Her show and setlist were really great, an excellent mixture of songs from the new album "Crash" and older songs. Some of my favorites had been "Gone", "Constant Repeat", "Used to know me" and "1999". In a break near the end of the show the audience was asking for "Taxi", by chanting this title. It's a song Charli XCX had been working on with SOPHIE, before her tragic death. ❤️ This led to a very emotional scene, as Charli was near crying when she explained to the audience that she didn't feel comfortable to sing those unreleased songs she had worked on with SOPHIE, as they feel unfinished to her. She said that a music video for the song was planned that never happened due to the tragic events. She explained that due to this songs that she had worked on together would be played in the pre show time. She said that she really cared for SOPHIE, and it was obvious how much she's in pain over her early death. She said it's okay when people ask for anything, if it comes from a place of love, but couldn't do it. However, she then played " Vroom Vroom", a song that was released and had a music video while SOPHIE still was there. The audience enjoyed this song a lot. After Charli XCX had finally left the stage, "Taxi" was played as an audio.

As I had a problem with my phone charger there are just a few pictures, mostly from the start of the concert.


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