Sun 15 Sep – Diarrhea Planet, So So Glos

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Diarrhea Planet at The Tiny Tavern in Eugene.
Picture by Todd Cooper

Showing up to the Tiny Tavern just before 8pm, because I know the place is small and I always get nervous that shows are going to be too full or something, seems now like it was a bit excessive. I sat at the end of the bar for about an hour listening to the members of So So Glos and Diarrhea Planet talking and making fun of the horrible musical…

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When I first heard the EP "Trees, Swallows, Houses" by Chicago's Maps & Atlases, I couldn't get enough. All of the tapping (pre-Marnie Stern era…and yes, I know she wasn't the first to do it, or the most well known, but it will be a cold day in hell when I start talking about Van Halen on this blog) the melodies and breakdowns. Everything about that EP is brilliant. I mean, I still can't listen to it enough.

I remember around that time (2006), on Myspace, repeatedly…

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We all love music, that much is obvious. It's why you are reading this, it's why I'm writing this. Sometimes music has the opportunity to really make a difference. Those differences can come in the form of small things - helping to make mundane chores bearable, perhaps giving us some new perspective on the world, showing us beauty in new things, new sounds and on and on. And sometimes music is able to do so much more, something that is bigger than all of us.

This compilation gives us all a…

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MGMT is finally releasing a follow up to 2010's superb "Congratulations." The new eponymous album is set for release on September 17 and is available for pre-order on iTunes, where it is referred to as the "optimizer deluxe edition." The pre-order comes with an instant download of the song "Your Life is a Lie," which can also be heard/seen below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cye-1RP5jso

Since we don't have much of the album to play, I can relay to you how caught off guard I was when first seeing the album…

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I understand that this album came out 5 months ago, but I also a.) don't care and b.) think that this is not only her best album to date, but probably one of the best albums to be released so far this year.

There has been a constant and steady development across Marnie Stern's releases beginning with "In Advance of the Broken Arm" from 2007. That album was a great statement as a debut. The guitars were mindblowing, the melodies were catchy and the lyrics were deeply personal. That the album starts…

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I just had to post this, because this is a pretty awesome (though admittedly borderline creepy…but still awesome) idea for an album. I mean, could you possibly think of a better way to create music with such an original idea that is at the same time a commentary on the information age and social media? I doubt you can. I doubt anyone can.

I'll let the press release speak for itself:

Golden Tickets is a collection of personalized "theme songs" for and about seven specific WHY? fans. Over the the course of several months, Yoni…

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The follow up to Neko Case's 2009 album "Middle Cyclone" is set for release on September 3. You can hear "The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You" in its entirety on NPR's website as a part of their "First Listen" which is where I've gotten the chance to listen to a lot of stuff that I have since fallen in love with over the years. I remember listening to the debut of Japandroids, Fucked Up's "David Comes…

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Oregon, and the rest of this corner of the country, has really been coming up the past few years with regard to music festivals. There's Sasquatch, in central Washington, bringing in an impressive lineup of bands in May. The Treefort music festival in Boise in March that brought in a whole slew of great artists like Dan Deacon, Youth Lagoon, Earth and Quasi. Of course, as one of my recent posts pointed out, there is also the annual roots/folk festival just outside of Portland called Pickathon.

But, in my opinion, the most…

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It has taken me this long to digest The Flaming Lips most recent album, "The Terror." It came out 4 months ago and I have given it several listens in that time. Admittedly the first time I listened to it, maybe a week or two before release, I set it aside and said to friends that I would never listen to it again. A few months went by and in July I gave it another few more shots.

The fact that it took me so long to get around to listening to the…

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You may not imagine a tiny blog like mine that nobody reads would get a steady stream of free music sent to their inbox, but I do. It takes a lot of effort (that 9 chances out of 10 is not worth it) to comb through all of the music that I am thrown on a weekly basis. Hundreds of hours of music.

I get into these moods where I want to listen to something that I have never heard before, or even heard of before. That's where Burn Down the Capital comes in and…