Recording engineer: Steven Kray, with technical assistance from Randy Layton
Video production: Jarratt Taylor
Video shooters: Jarratt Taylor / Anthony DelCalzo / David Christensen
Photos: David Christensen / Jeremy Petersen
Interview: Jeremy Petersen

Past Life Martyred Saints, the 2011 debut from EMA (aka Erika M. Anderson), doesn’t always make for easy listening. The imagery is often dark, ranging from violent to anxiety-riddled, and the hooks (of the musical variety) aren’t necessarily identifiable upon a first or second listen. Anderson’s voice often seethes with rage, before turning on a beat to a whispered sweetness– thus creating the cathartic crux of many of these intense and personal songs. A little more quality time spent with the music begins to reveal its pop sensiblities, especially in comparison to Anderson’s past work as part of the experiemental noise duo Gowns. “It’s not all like minor chords just strummed slowly through reverb,” she told us, “I feel like there’s a lot of triumph on it…even if it’s dealing with heavy themes.”

EMA stopped by our studios with her band (Leif Shackelford on keys and viola, Nicole Anderson on drums, and Nicky Mao on guitar) for a faithfully passionate set of songs from the debut. Let the record show she was also enagaging and downright cheery (she told us that interviewers are often surprised that she isn’t “suicidal and crying in a corner”) as she talked about her music, the cultivation of her visual image, and her small-town South Dakota roots.

1/18 – Jeff Ross

1/21 – MythBusters “Behind The Myths” Tour (Keller Auditorium) – 2 Shows!

1/21 – Jake Shimabukuro - SOLD OUT!

1/27 – Martin Sexton

1/28 – Paula Poundstone - SOLD OUT!

1/28 – Paula Poundstone (9:30PM – 2nd show added!)

2/2 – Soul Salvation featuring Ruthie Foster and Paul Thorn

2/3 – The Wood Brothers

2/4 – Sisters of the Road presents Winterfolk 24

2/10 – Jackie Greene

2/11 – LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends

2/17 – Mat Kearney @ Roseland Theater

2/18 – Andy McKee

2/24 – Richard Marx

2/25 – Keller Williams

3/2+3 – Railroad Earth @ Crystal Ballroom

3/4 – Solas

3/7 – Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile @ Wonder Ballroom

3/13 – Guster Present a Night of Acoustic Music featuring the Guster string players

3/15 – Hapa

3/16 – 3rd Annual St. Patricks Day Celebration w/ Kevin Burke & Cal Scott featuring Tim O’Brien

3/21 – The Magnetic Fields @ Roseland Theater

3/23 – Umphreys McGee @ Roseland Theater

3/23 – Sharon Van Etten/The War On Drugs

3/25 – Tyrone Wells

3/31 – Ani Difranco @ Roseland Theater

3/31 – Dark Star Orchestra @ Crystal Ballroom

3/31 – Cheryl Wheeler

4/5+6 – Young The Giant @ Roseland Theater

4/6 – Uncle Kracker’s Hometown Tour

4/7 – The Motet

4/11 – Andrew Bird @ Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

4/11 – Arlo Guthrie

4/20 – Dar Williams

5/17 – U.K.

Join Aladdin Theater E-List HERE.

URL: http://www.aladdin-theater.com/

Might Find it Cheap from Luke Norby on Vimeo.

Goods news! From the depths of winter, we’re able to start releasing news about touring plans for the coming months – and we hope to see all of you out there. Starting in early March, we’re going to spend a month crossing the Western half of the country with our good friends the Parson Redheads, including a very eventful stop by SXSW in Austin (for the first time since 2009!), before making our way back to Portland. Tickets for these shows are all on-sale now. Check out the complete list of dates below, and click here for tickets. If you don’t see your hometown on the schedule, fear not – there will be many more show announcements to come in 2012.

In the meantime, we have a couple items to tide you over through these cold months. First, there is a free download of our new single “Might Find It Cheap” and a great track from the Parson Redheads, called “Burning Up The Sky,” available on our website. Second, our new video for American Goldwing track “Takin’ It Easy Too Long” premiered on Paste earlier today. This video was directed by our very own drummer, Mr. Brian Adrian Koch. Check it out!

See you soon,
Blitzen Trapper

Blitzen Trapper Tour Dates
March 4 – Arcata, Calif. @ Humboldt Brews
March 5 – Sacramento, Calif. @ Harlow’s
March 6 – Visalia, Calif. @ The Cellar Door
March 7 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Troubadour
March 9 – Santa Barbara, Calif. @ SOhO Restaurant and Music Club
March 10 – Long Beach, Calif. @ Alex’s Bar
March 11 – Phoenix, Ariz. @ The Crescent Ballroom
March 12 – Tucson, Ariz. @ Club Congress
March 14-17 – Austin, Texas @ SXSW
March 19 – Albuquerque, N.M. @ Launchpad
March 20 – Telluride, Co. @ Sheridan Opera House
March 22 – Salt Lake City, Utah @ The State Room
March 23 – Boise, Idaho @ Neurolux (Treefort Music Festival)
June 1 – Ozark, Ark. @ Wakarusa Music Festival

URL: http://www.blitzentrapper.net/

Blitzen Trapper – American Goldwing by subpop

Will Johnson (Centro-matic, South San Gabriel), Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Gob Iron, Uncle Tupelo), Yim Yames (My Morning Jacket, Monsters of Folk), and Anders Parker (Varnaline, Gob Iron) have announced they will tour in support of their album New Multitudes this upcoming spring. The album is a Woody Guthrie tribute, which will be released the album on Feb. 28 via Rounder Records to coincide with Guthrie’s 100th birthday celebration.

Tour dates:

March
6 - San Francisco, CA @ The Filmore
7 - Lost Angeles, CA @ Music Box
9 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
10 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox
12 - Washington, D.C. @ The Birchmere
13 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
14 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
16 - Boston, MA @ Paradise

Check it out on Facebook.

Like a cadre of musical brothers finally coalescing after years on the road apart, Yim Yames has joined forces with Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Gob Iron, Uncle Tupelo), Will Johnson (Centro-matic, South San Gabriel), and Anders Parker (Varnaline, Gob Iron) to gratefully deliver New Multitudes, an intimate interpretation of American icon and musical legend Woody Guthrie’s previously unrecorded lyrics.

Set to coincide with the centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie’s birth year, New Multitudes will be released on February 28, 2012 by Rounder Records as a 12 track release and a 24 track limited edition. The limited edition features original Guthrie lyric sheets, the 12 track release, and 12 additional compositions recorded by Farrar and Parker. The album will also be available on vinyl.

Please visit the New Multitudes Facebook page: facebook.com/newmultitudes to hear “Old L.A.” from the album, featuring Anders Parker on lead vocal. “Like” the page to receive updates including interview footage, live performance video, etc.

Under the invitation of Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, to tour the Guthrie archives, each of the four songwriters were offered the chance to plumb and mine the plethora of notebooks, scratch pads, napkins, etc. for anything that might inspire them to lend their voices and give the words new life. “These guys worked on an amazing group of lyrics, much of it culled from Woody’s times in LA. Lyric wise, it’s a part of the story that is still mostly unknown. From Woody’s experiences on LA’s skid row to his later years in Topanga Canyon, they are uniquely intimate, and relate two distinctly emotional periods in his life.”

The spirit of Guthrie may have been involved in more ways than one, as all four songwriters mentioned the immediate connection to the songs they chose, or as they would suggest, “chose them.” The writing came together quickly, as if the mischief muse who originally penned them latched himself to each writer’s grey matter upon first contact.

Musically, it is this sense of collaboration that makes New Multitudes not just another trite and traditional acoustic regurgitation of back porch blues. From the ragged jangle of its opening track, “Hoping Machine”, the loping lilt of “Fly High”, the floorboard stomp of “No Fear”, to the lush warmth and sudden sonic gut punch of “My Revolutionary Mind” the cohorts deliver a lesson in discovering a song’s sweet spot. It’s the function and preparedness of each artist’s dogged work ethic gleaned the old-fashion way; veracious songs, road weary odometers, and sweat stained live shows, all attributes of the man they are honoring.

JANUARY

1/4 : Liv Warfield, Jarrod Lawson , DJ OG One

1/5 : Bear & Moose, Pigeons, Mike Coykendall

1/6 : Archelogy, Tango Alpha Tango, Adam Shearer (WEINLAND)

1/7 : Casey Neill & The Norway Rats, Sassparilla, Jackrabbit

1/8 : Glassbones, A Happy Death, Nicole Berke

1/11 : Blouse, Wampire, The Crow

1/12 : Emily Wells, Timmy Straw

1/13 : Pickwick, Bryan John Appleby, Deep Sea Diver

1/14 : Throwback Suburbia, Stereovision, Frame By Frame

1/19 : Pack A.D. , My Goodness

1/20 : Rags & Ribbons, Water & Bodies, Fox And The Law

1/21 : Youth Lagoon, Radiation City, Pure Bathing Culture

1/22 : Augustana, Graffiti 6

1/25 : Atomic Tom

1/26 : Jessie Baylin, The Watson Twins

1/27 : Scars On 45, Anya Marina

1/28 : Alabama Shakes

1/31 : Graveyard, Radio Moscow

FEBRUARY

2/2 : Teitur, Aunt Martha – EARLY SHOW! Doors at 7pm, Show at 8pm

2/4 : Lost Lander, Youth, Houndstooth

2/6 : Twin Sister, Ava Luna

2/7 : Los Campesinos!, Parenthetical Girls

2/8 : Los Campesinos!, Parenthetical Girls

2/9 : Wax Fingers, Sun Angle

2/10 : Where’s The Band Tour featuring: Ace Enders, Anthony Raneri, Chris Conley. Evan Weiss, Matt Pryor

2/14 : Gary Clark Jr., White Dress

2/17 : Bombay Bicycle Club

2/18 : And And And, Aan, Sky White Tiger

2/19 : See a Little Light with Bob Mould

2/20 : The Fresh & Onlys and Disappears

2/22 : Veronica Falls, Bleached, Ghost Animal

2/23 : Craig Finn, Mount Moriah

2/25 : Howlin’ Rain, My Goodness, Datura Blues

2/26 : Great Wilderness, Harlowe & The Great North Woods, Ocean Floor

2/29 : Elliott BROOD

MARCH

3/2 : Chadwick Stokes

3/11 : The Twilight Sad

3/12 : Saul Williams

3/23 : Mr. Gnome, Pt. Juncture WA, Sun Angle

APRIL

4/2 : John K Samson & The Provincial Band, Shotgun Jimmie

4/4 : Bowerbirds, Dry The River

4/5 : Swervedriver

4/10 : Metronomy

4/12 : First Aid Kit

4/26 : Neon Indian

MAY

5/25 : Coeur De Pirate

Recording engineer: Steven Kray, with technical assistance from Randy Layton
Video production: Jarratt Taylor
Video shooters: Jarratt Taylor / Anthony DelCalzo / Lana Bui / Nate Sjol
Photos: David Christensen / Jeremy Petersen
Interview: Jeremy Petersen

Radiation City’s debut The Hands That Take You first saw life on cassette, the band’s founders Lizzy Ellison and Cameron Spies releasing it on their own Apes Tapes label early last year before it was given wider distribution on CD and vinyl by Tender Loving Empire in September. The introduction to that for many of us was the gorgeous and impossibly catchy “The Color of Industry,” which seemed to fuse old-school soul and girl-group sounds with modern day indie pop. It was a shimmering and impossibly well-polished number from a record about which can be said much the same. Paying little attention to genre designations, the sound eventually touches upon everything from Astrud Gilberto to Low to the Beach Boys, with a bit of psychedelia thrown in for good measure. It’s a dreamy, summery, melodic collection—and a precocious beginning to be sure.

The Portland band joins as a quintet (Spies and Ellison joined by Randy Bemrose, Matt Rafferty and Patti King) to play a subtly intense set of songs from the debut. They also talk about their formation, the rationale behind an all-cassette label, and the unexpected success of the past year.

upcoming in-store performances & events:

All in-store performances are at Music Millennium 32nd & E Burnside, 503-231-8926.

BEAR & MOOSE
Wednesday 1/4 – 6 PM
Bear & Moose is guitarist, singer and songwriter Eric Mueller and drummer/percussionist Simon Lucas, who also contributes backing vocals. Bear & Moose has been playing together for two years and has made a name for themselves with their high energy, indefatigable shows. Now, Bear & Moose has captured the power of their live show on Bear/Moose, their aptly named double album debut. The result is a bracing sonic assault that showcases the band’s keen balance of melody and invigorating noise. Bear/Moose is 24 tracks steeped in blues, psychedelia, punk, folk, prog rock and garage band excess.

THROWBACK SUBURBIA
Saturday 1/14 – 3 PM
Refreshing. Retro-cool. Original, yet classic. With one mod-style boot planted in classic British rock and another planted firmly in today’s pop universe, Throwback Suburbia continues to break new ground with their fresh take on ultra-hip, harmony-laden power pop.

THE CRESCENDO SHOW
Sunday 1/15 – 5 PM
The Crescendo Show is known for their intricate playing, foot stomping, group singing and youthful energy. Their self-titled debut contains an eclectic mix of acoustic and electric instruments. The 40 minutes of original music on this disc provides upbeat fun for all ages which includes male/female vocal harmonies that will have you singing along, and delightful musical melodies that stick in your head and put a smile on your face.