THE DELI

It’s New Year’s Eve, and you know what that means—an excuse for bars to jack up their drink prices and charge ridiculous covers because some shitty band will be butchering other bands’ music all night with a complimentary champagne toast. But have no fear, my fellow Portlanders, for if you sift through all the NYE bullshit, you will find gold. Below are some fantastic local NYE shows that will be worth the cover charge.

Doug Fir: The first time I read about this, I had to do a double take, but yes, Quasi is performing The Who for New Year’s Eve, and it’s going to be epic. What makes this show even more epic is the fact that other local folk monsters The Shaky Hands and indie darlings, Inside Voices, will be accompanying them. If you want to chill out and listen to some amazing Portland folk music (and good covers) this is the NYE celebration for you! Show starts at 9 p.m. $15.

Holocene: The theme of this New Year’s Eve bash is “NYE 102,010,” as in it’s set 100,000 years in the future. Portland’s spacey electro-pop trio Reporter’s synthesized beats paired with Guidance Counselor’s gritty, lo-fi electronica, not to mention a mess of local DJs, is a fitting lineup for such a premise. If you want to get hot and sweaty with people dressed like robots, or spacemen, or Neanderthals (you never know, the apocalypse could happen in the next 100,00 years) then this is the NYE celebration for you! Show starts at 8 p.m. $15.

Mission Theater: Two of Portland’s more melancholic indie bands, Weinland and The Dimes, are doing something very out of their element (or seemingly so) this New Year’s Eve. The bands have promised a dance off, where they will be performing “some of the best dance music of the last 40 years,” and though neither band seems to fit the mold for “dance music,” they each do an extremely good job of incorporating pop and melody into their music. If you want to witness quite possibly the most awkward (or surprisingly awesome) dance party of 2009, then this is the NYE celebration for you! Show starts at 9 p.m. $15.

Mississippi Studios: Portland’s morbid Americana-ers, The Builders & The Butchers, have been playing nothing but large venue shows this year, and though I wish them nothing but success in 2010, they are the type of band that is much more impressive in intimate settings where they can get the audience involved, so the quaint Mississippi Studios will be a perfect place for them to ring in the new year. Fellow swamp stomping blues boys Dr. Helicopter are also on the bill. If you want to feel like you’re celebrating the turn of the century in Louisiana, then this is the NYE celebration for you! Show starts at 10 p.m. $15.

There are other great shows happening at venues such as the Ash Street Saloon, Branx, Rotture, and Slabtown, just to name a few, so if none of these tickle your fancy, check out their NYE rosters.

-Katrina Nattress

Even though these guys have been slinging out records since the ’90s, I hadn’t heard of them until today.

Rollerball recently released yet another record, their 15th, called Two Feathers. I personally think that’s a lot of records. I’m only just beginning to realize the depth and the assortment of layers of music this town has to offer.

From what I’ve read and heard so far, I would pitch their sound as extremely varied – ranging from experimental jazz influenced rock to slower tunes that are atmospheric and ambient. Their sound often seems to carry a reverberating presence, akin to the expansive spatial dome of a cathedral, and along with it, the same intensity and seriousness one might find under that type of religious dome. Some cool shit here.

Rollerball rocks rich, interesting and weird compositions with just piano, bass, drums, sax and female vocals. Take a minute and check it out.

– Joel Sommer

Looking for something to sate these winter wisps? Musee Mechanique is an excellent laid-back indie band who often incorporates a well-placed touch of folk influence. They very much remind me of a non-abrasive Blonde Redhead, both in song style and vocals on certain songs. I particularly enjoyed the tracks "Two Friends Like Us" and "Nothing Glorious," both of which can be found on their MySpace profile. The band seems to enjoy creating dreamy environments that soothe the soul and often bring in quality arrangements of strings, woodwinds or vibraphones to complete their compositions.

Check out the above fan video for their song "Our Changing Skins," off of the band’s stellar 2008 debut, Hold This Ghost.

– Joel Sommer

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweethearts in Bands,

As usual, The Deli’s Year End Poll (for emerging artists) will assign the cover of our Spring Issue 2010. The polling process is as complex as rocket science (if you want to try and get your head around it be our guest and go here).

The submissions for the open contest that will select minimum 3 artists for the next phase is now closed. We are currently receiving the jurors’ votes. The next phase will be the readers’ vote, which will start on January 3.

All the bands that submitted to our open contest were also added to our chart system for indie artists – which will get them some exposure in the future.

Here we are taking a little bit of a holiday break – we’ll still have some content up in the next few days, but not as much. We will see you back in early January – in the meantime Happy Holidays to you all!!

The Deli’s Staff
www.thedelimagazine.com

Musical peoples from Portland and beyond.

A few weeks are left before the end of 2009, and the time has come for our end of year musical "summary". Yes, you got that right: The Deli’s "Best of (emerging) Portland 2009 Poll" is upon us!

This year we’ll have an overall chart including the votes from Jury, Writers and Readers, and a Readers’ charts including only the readers’ votes. There will be prizes in vouchers, software and studio time for all the top artists in both charts.

We have a lot to tell you about this, but as this poll couldn’t happen without sponsors, we’ll start by listing them all, and by thanking them for being part of this.

Instructions about the poll coming soon!

PREMIUM SPONSORS

OTHER SPONSORS

providing a total of 18 audio plug in for the pool of prizes(9 iZotope, 9 IK Multimedia)

And on Christmas? You betcha. In Music We Trust is sponsoring this holiday hullabaloo at Doug Fir‘s cozy cabin cave, featuring a little of everything to sate your yuletide pangs.

Tunes by Miriam’s Well, Jon Davidson and Russell Stafford, and the incomparable Michael Dean Damron promise to unravel the stress knots of the holidays, and kick-start the finale of 2009 in style.

Show at 9:00 p.m. (doors at 8). FREE. Tell ’em Large Marge sentcha.

In other Mike D news, it was announced this week that one of Portland’s all-time dirtiest, debaucherous, downright powerful cow-punk bands ever – I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House – will be reuniting come March, 2010. Here’s the statement from the band:

Hey ya’ll,

Well, it’s official.

On March 5th, come join us at Dante’s for our first time on stage together in over three years. We’re going to be playing a long set to fit in all of our favorite songs. It’s going to be a night that you won’t want to miss!

We’ll have T-shirts available. If things go as planned, we will also have a new CD available containing songs that we had recorded, but not yet released. We’re all excited that you’ll finally get to hear them.

We haven’t hammered out all of the details for the night yet, so check in with us before the show.

Come check us out on Facebook and leave a comment with the top three SOB songs you want to hear at the show, and a favorite SOB moment if you have one!

Mike D, Jon, Dave, Flap, and Mole

This is incredible news. Now you know.

– Ryan J. Prado

If you haven’t seen Bodhi live before, now is your chance. The trio just announced a last minute show at Berbati’s Pan tomorrow, December 14th, and the price is a whopping zero dollars and zero cents (so you basically have no excuse not to go).

With the recent(ish) arrival of a debut album, the at times garage-style, at others rockabilly threesome will have plenty of material (and hopefully some new stuff) to aurally appease us. If a free show isn’t tempting enough, let me dangle $1 Pabsts as an incentive. Oh, and did I mention Bodhi was crowned winner of The Deli’s Band of the Month Poll in September? If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

Show starts at 10 p.m. (doors at 9 p.m.) FREE!

-Katrina Nattress

The sounds of winter just got a little more minimalist.

Portland shoegaze (no ocular evidence thus far has proven this allocation false) trio Mimicking Birds will be releasing their self-titled debut album on Isaac Brock’s Glacial Pace Recordings on February 9th, after spending most of 2009 either hunkered down in Brock’s Glacial Pace home studio, opening for Modest Mouse on a mondo U.S. tour, or touring again with Blind Pilot. They’ve been very busy, and their deeds do not go unnoticed.

Mimicking Birds started out as a solo project for Lacy under the moniker Neight, but has since recruited the efforts of childhood friends Tim Skellenger on guitar, and Aaron Hanson on drums.

The band recently enjoyed some huge shows opening for Modest Mouse during MusicFest NW 2009, and have slowly, but steadily ascended the stairwell of northwestern taste-making.

There’s a sneak peek of Mimicking Birds’ tracks on the Glacial Pace Web site, including "Burning Stars," a lovely, sweeping ballad espousing a more focused detail to resonance, as well as sonic aural aesthetics. It’s a slightly folkier take on the group’s ethereal soundscapes, and it’s a great sign that this album could be the soundtrack to your winter malaise.

Thumbs WAY up to "The Loop" while we’re at it. The quality of the recording, and the looping, repeated acoustic riffing of OG Bird Nate Lacy make for a disarming listen.

– Ryan J. Prado

Oregon loves it’s folk, roots, americana–whatever you wanna call it–and now a new generation is embracing some sort of blended indie-folk that combines strings and foot stomping with banjos and pow-wows; somethingsooo poppy you’ll jiggle and smile inside and out.

This brand is not better typified than Boston-to-PDX transplants The Ascetic Junkies. Mixing vocals from Kali Giaritta and Matt Harmon make for a melodic hootenanny tingling with folk-country and bouncing indie.

Obviously literary nuts, The Junkies took their name from a group of misfits in a Kerouac novel and after moving to Portland in 2008, they broke onto the scene with their self-produced and released debut One Shoe Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

A little older, a little wiser, and a little more mixed-up musically, The Junkies release a glorious new four-track EP, Don’t Wait For the Rescue Squad, tonight at Backspace and everyone who attends gets a free copy of the album.

The band says this: "In an attempt to avoid wasting plastic that we assume you won’t use for anything other than ripping the album onto your computer, we’re just going to bring a laptop with us that you can feel free to plug your iPod/flash drive/CD-R/etc. into at any point during the show to steal the EP. Or if you want to sign your email address on a piece of paper, we’ll email it to you when we get home that night."

So come kick it up and swing around to some pop/bluegrass/folk/indie rock with The Ascetic Junkies. Show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $6.

-Chris Young