Eclectic Grooves

As I promised last week, here is the conclusion to my list of favorite albums from 2016. I hope you find something on this list that grabs your attention. 6) Thee Oh Sees- A Weird Exits When I listened to A Weird Exits for the first time, I made a snap judgement that this was finally going to be a Thee Oh Sees record that wouldn't make my year-end list. It didn't have the same melodic magic as much of the band's discography to that point, and a lot of the songs had a similar vibe to them. After giving the record some time to sink in, I realized that my initial thoughts were clouded by expectations of what they should sound like. Once I relaxed, and just let the sounds wash over me, I couldn't get enough of the blistering guitars and pummeling drums that filled my earhole. The sound that is presented on this record is pure ecstatic euphoria! Gelatinous Cube and Unwrap the Fiend Pt.2 7) Aesop Rock- The Impossible Kid   It's been...

With the Halloween season creeping up on me once again, I will be presenting a more concise overview of my last three nights of Music Fest NW 201 to focus my energy on compiling a new Halloween mix over the next week. My hope is to have this year's mix posted within a week of Halloween so that everyone will have a sufficient amount of time to enjoy it. Friday :  La Luz- 9:00 Since I had already seen Mt. Eerie with Bonnie Prince Billy on Thursday, La Luz was definitely the best choice for the 9:00 time slot. I heard a few songs from their Damp Face ep that was released last year, and I was completely sold on their twisted surf noir sound that seemed to draw from influences as diverse as  Brenda Lee, David Lynch and The Ventures. After arriving at Dante's, the band started promptly at 9:00, and proceeded to deliver a fantastic set filled with seductive ballads, surf instrumentals and garage rock rave-ups. Their set was concise at 35 minutes, but filled with enough memorabl...

Every year around the first week of September, thousands of fanatic music lovers hit the streets of Portland, anxiously scanning their Music Fest schedules to determine how to see the best cross-section of bands in a finite period of time. While Music Fest NW started out as a relatively small event featuring mostly local bands and a few assorted venues, it has radically expanded into a six day extravaganza showcased at practically every venue in Portland covering musicians from all over the country. This year, I was fortunate enough to win a free pass to Music Fest NW, thus allowing me the ability to cover the event in full on Eclectic Grooves. Considering the abundant scope of this event, I figured that I would provide a schedule of my picks for Music Fest NW to the readers who plan on attending it this year. The following is my suggested itinerary to get the most out of this year's festival. Those of you who dig the music regularly posted on Eclectic Grooves wil...

Well, its that time of year again where vinyl and out-of print rarities are pushed to the bottom of the listening stack to make way for albums released in 2011.  Initially, I set out to start this project in the first part of December so I wasn't rushing frantically to beat the clock on New Year's Eve. However, those of you who have a predilection for collecting and listening to music know that this is quite an unrealistic expectation to set for myself. This quest for creating the perfect list of albums that caters to every taste out there is practically impossible since list-making is completely subjective. Albums from artists like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, PJ Harvey, Kurt Vile, Wilco, Adele, St Vincent, Lykke Li, Feist and The War On Drugs were featured on virtually every top 10 list. Whether or not these albums are deserving of this seems to be irrelevant to the fact that most people found these records to be t...