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SAM PFEIFLE
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Kitchen, Love, and Emily Dickinson
Putnam Smith wishes he could trade places with Emily Dickinson.
Don’t call it a throwback
Tricky Britches lean pretty heavily toward the old-timey end of the spectrum, with a deep and abiding respect for the body of American stringband work, manifesting itself in original songs that are instantly familiar.
The free Conqueror
Part of Whitcomb's appeal is that the material and the performance are of a piece, everything placed just so and meticulously machined.
Baroque me, Amadeus
There's something baroque, something emotional and primal, vivid and stark about Luck, the band's first proper full-length release.
Papers, Please
Papers, Please
Rub some mud on it
On their new and third full-length release, Land , the Mallett Brothers Band alternate between boozy and anthemic ballads and boozy and anthemic sing-along stomps, always providing plenty of opportunity for just about anybody to find a personal touchpoint.
First thing with the English Breakfast
The order of operations used to be you played a bunch of shows, then you released an album. Now it's often the other way around. When the English Breakfast played Slainte last weekend, it was their Portland live debut. Yet their debut album, Shifting Seas , has been marinating on Bandcamp since March 1 — a 15-track affair, no less.
And the horse they rode in on
"After the Flood only Love Remains" is stop-in-your-tracks beautiful, and what passes for a single for them. If you can slow yourself down to their pace, see the world in half-time for a bit (which is almost impossible when you try to keep up with the pace of things like the Internet), it becomes incredibly catchy, a sing-along.
You better, or you just might get punched in the head
You better, or you just might get punched in the head
Gone to ground
Max García Conover's debut full-length, Burrow , has a starkness, like listening to music through an Instagram filter, that conveys a feeling of going to ground.
Home and away
Nigel Hall, the pride of Bangor and one of the original Monday night soul players at Portland's Big Easy, was the featured attraction at one of the actual Big Easy's most respected local spots.
Smells like smoke
With so many odes to weed already out there, it's pretty hard distinguishing yourself this way, b ut Wisdom doesn't beat around the bush
Playful solo work from half of Cactus Highway
The best thing about Rob Duquette's kid-oriented work is that it's not always obviously kids' music.
Reading the Roadsigns
You might expect '50s-style sock-hop fare, or maybe Highway 61 folk tunes for the American dream, but the band's sound is actually more in the '80s/'90s pocket.
Returning from Exile
There's something in rock and roll that's tied up with those hetero-stereo male traits of bravado, carnal sexuality, and toughness, from Elvis's hips to Jimmy Page's tight pants to Lemmy Kilmister's grizzled face.
Caught in their traps
Nice Places would have been the perfect local opener for the Minus the Bear/Circa Survive show at the State Theatre coming up on March 16.
Galen Richmond had a problem.
Here’s what you need:
Don't try this on your Windows 97 machine.
You can dance if you want to
No, seriously, have you been up to Hallowell?
Call it a placeholder
It's been a while since Portland had itself a bona fide new label, something more than just a vanity title for a band's self-released album. It makes sense, considering the fracturing nature of the music industry in general and the ease with which independent artists can record and release music nowadays.
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