The Problem(s) With Music Blogs: Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Gauntlet Hair at Bunk Bar

Problem 1:

Damn you music blogs for introducing me to a bunch of great music by bands still too small to consider touring anytime soon. I’ve been waiting for a Gauntlet Hair tour since their single “I’ve Been Thinking...” was run through the cogs of the internet hype machine about a year and a half ago.


That anticipation mixed with a headlining Unknown Mortal Orchestra at Bunk Bar two nights in a row seemed too good to not be a misprint.

Problem 2:

The main way discovering new music on blogs is different than, say, the radio, is the translation of the music into text. More and more, my first experience with a band or a song is through reading descriptions and opinions of it. This acts as a music filter not at all based on just listening and deciding if I, ya know, like it.

I have probably spent more time reading about Thursday’s headliners, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, than I have actually listening to them. I’ve never liked funk music, and couldn’t get over the numerous associations made between this band the genre. In this case (and many others I have yet to discover), I was wrong to take the word for it.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra kicked out some very danceable tunes just buried enough in that haze of bedroom pop to prevent them from falling into that rut, appropriately described as “groovy.”


Their self-titled album has since become one of my favorite examples of a band capable of giving a nostalgic nod to the music of the 70’s and 80’s without actually turning around and chillin’ in it.

Problem 3:

By introducing music to fans via text, new reasons for liking a band or a song are introduced. I find myself deciding to listen to a song based on things like what effects the song is drenched in, where the band is from, or what label released the album. In short, I give myself reasons to like or dislike music before I actually have the chance to hear it.

So, when someone noticed all of my anticipation to see Gauntlet Hair channeled into, what I call, my dance moves, and asked me what I thought of the band, I found myself answering with a number of reasons—none of which were simply “They were great”.

No, I launched into a rant about Colorado bands and the DIY venue the Rhinoceropolis, and how much I like it when bands coat their music in so many delay effects that you really can’t single out any one instrument. This is, of course, way too much information to yell into someone’s ear at an already loud show and mostly just causes confusion rather than answering the initial question.

That being said, Gauntlet Hair was great and every bit as fun as I hoped they would be, and every song just kind of blurred into this large, echoey mess of weirdo dance music, which was a solid live representation of their recently released self-titled album on Dead Oceans.


The last thing I learned from this show, which has nothing to do with music blogs or either of the bands: Don’t be the one holding the pipe made out of a pomegranate when the bartender is angrily pushing his way through the crowd to confiscate it.

Never Knows Best Issue 4

Sixteen pages. All comics, including:

St. Arc
The Quarter Life Crisis
Portland, IA
Skinny Jeans
Mew and Mewtwo

And some random others.

Let me know if you want one, k?

Altered Zones John Maus Interview

Although, I haven't really grown to like his music quite yet (I'm sure I will), this John Maus guy is kind of becoming my hero. This interview, the way his gestures and manner of speaking is described is like the personification of that really famous Kerouac quote (ya know, the one written on all the On The Road posters). He is surely the least chill "chillwaver" in existence.

http://alteredzones.com/posts/1713/artist-profile-john-maus/

St. Arc #1

Here is a new comic I am working on that will mostly occur in order and tell some weird re-hashing of all of the myths surrounding Joan of Arc, as if she were somehow canonized while she were living and actually lived in some geographically blurry version of the Wild West and had something to do with the Ark of the Covenant.

I have a lot of ideas for this, so I will try to finish these somewhat regularly, although I am terrible at drawing horses and a bunch of other things, so it tends to take me a really long time to do something even as simple as this little 4-panel deal you see here.

Heaven and Hell and the Coast as the Line In Between

Multnomah Falls





Devil's Rest


The Pacific Ocean






Angel's Rest

Shabazz Palaces, Pet Sounds, and the Unfamiliarly Familiar

I, like many others, am currently floored by Shabazz Palace’s recently released album Black Up. Within the first minute or two of listening to it, I could already tell it was unlike anything I had ever heard before, that is, unlike any other hip-hop I have ever heard. I started to think about how strange it is that I can have that thought “This is totally unlike anything I have ever heard” in hearing a song, or a sound, or in this case, an album, yet still bring a specific genre to mind within which to establish the guidelines for what “anything” can mean in that statement. In this case, anything, only means every other hip-hop song and artist I have heard, rather than every song or album or artist or ambient sound I have ever heard anywhere in my entire life.


So, Shabazz Palace’s new album is like something I have heard before—hip-hop. The way Black Up plays out so uniquely using the same, familiar tools hip-hop has been developing since it began is, in many ways, more incredible than musicians using entirely new and unfamiliar techniques to make music actually completely unlike anything anyone has ever heard before, which is certainly something still worth admiring.

There are thousands and thousands of examples of this throughout the history of music, and we can thank these examples for progressing music to where it is now, and establishing new genres when some artist or movement managed to push things beyond those established lines we set up to define genres. The Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds and subsequent Good Vibrations single, in lieu Smile, are classic examples of early game-changers.


I’ve read that “sonic” was the word primarily used to describe the new direction The Beach Boys’ sound was headed as of the release of Pet Sounds. The coining of this new term is proof enough that this album was anything else being made at the time, while still managing to be familiar enough to be called pop music (and, therefore, hold the attention of that delicate demographic of teenagers who practically determined the success or failure of albums released in the early to mid 60’s).

Pet Sounds is of course still mentioned frequently today, due to its own genre-pushing inventiveness and production techniques, often making top so-and-so lists, not to mention spawning its own “Bands Who Are Trying to Make Pet Sounds, Again” lists and claims. But the fact that this claim is often made of other bands then and still to this day, shows that it has become something that is like other things we have heard--all the music effected by it. In fact, it requires a bit of research and listening to understand how Pet Sounds, which has since become so clearly pop music, was new and bold and inventive at the time of its release.

J Dilla’s Donuts is another more recent (and probably more relevant) example of this within the same genre as Shabazz Palaces (and Bullion’s mixtape Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee is a wonderful combination of the marks left on music by The Beach Boys and J Dilla).


Donuts has been so influential that it spawned numerous Dilla-esque (a J Dilla-specific version of it “sonic”) claims in hip-hop to come, even spreading into other genres as well, including our modern day pop radio music and genres as small and specific as, say, chillwave.

Whether or not Shabazz Palace’s Black Up will have this effect on future music will be left to time to tell. I’m sure no one could justify their claims at the time of the release of Pet Sounds that it would change the way music would be made and heard afterward, although it isn’t a huge step to make when it follows the claim “this album is unlike anything I have ever heard before.”

The difference between the two claims is that one need not justify the latter with anything besides the wonder they experience upon hearing this new musical territory for the first time, and then second time… and third time… and fourth time…

Wise Blood, Holocene Birthday Party

Wise Blood and Friendly Fires at Doug Fir

I found out about this show because I was obsessively listening to the 5 or 6 Wise Blood songs I could find and download on repeat while I was working my 9-5 temp job I do from time to time, and I thought to myself, "I really like this! I wonder if this band is touring," and sure enough, he had a Portland date on his calendar.


It wasn't until later that I found out he was the opener for Friendly Fires who I hadn't really heard of and didn't like upon investigating them.

But I went anyway, and I was really hoping Wise Blood was still going to be playing solo (I think I kind of explained this obsession I have with solo, sample-based artists in my Dirty Beaches post), but he had a drummer and someone covering all his samples and keyboard playing, which gave the main dude behind the band, Chris, a chance to kind of dance and wander into the crowd and drink too much and smash bottles. He seemed very appreciative to just be playing because he said he usually just tries to get into fights, but instead was offering to sex the whole audience, which was, ya know, nice, I guess.

I ended up leaving early because I just really didn't want to see Friendly Fires.

Doug Fir shows are always really expensive.

Also, I hate paying headliner prices to see the opening bands, but it happens.

Holocene Birthday Party

The best part of this show was when the guy doing all of the DJing for Purple and Green kept pausing his songs to tell the audience to fuck off because he thought we weren't into it or dancing hard enough, and he kept telling us to go home. I kind of thought it was just something he says to get the crowd pumped up and dancing, but he kept doing it during each song, and at one point asked us to imagine that this was the last night of our lives. He slammed his laptop shut at the end and, I think, stormed off the stage without saying anything, although I could just be remembering it wrong. I did feel like the entire room was pretty into it though, so I didn't really see where he was coming from. I don't know anything about being a DJ, and I know very little about making dance music, but it does seem that it would be very hard to get a vibe going that people can dance to if you keep stopping the beat every 4 minutes.

The last band, Miracles Club, was great, and I'm glad I finally was able to see them after noticing their name around the city for so long. They played every song they knew (which was only 6-7, I think), and I don't know if it makes it seem more personal or less professional or if it is just endearing when that happens, but I love it.

I saw most of Blouse's set, and I liked them quite a bit, although they sound very of the time, and by that I mean they have that 80's throwback thing which a lot of bands (and people, too) seem to be doing a lot now, which I am mostly okay with because all of that music being made now sounds pretty good and I really don't like very much of the 80's music it is all stemming from. Kind of like how the remake of Last House on the Left was way better than the original.


The overall lineup for this show was full and good, and it reflected my entire attitude toward a lot of Portland music--there is an awful lot of electronic pop bands here, and I like seeing them all, but it is becoming a bit exhausting. Is this the Starfucker aftermath? I'm honestly asking. I'm still kind of new here and know that I couldn't back up a claim like that if I were to actually make it.