Ben Meyercord's Live Music Picks for Wednesday, April 27th

Hello Dear Readers,

Last night I played Nevada City in Y La Bamba on tour with Dark Dark Dark and Why Are You Building Such A Big Ship?. We played in Santa Rosa yesterday and I am currently in Sacramento. We are playing Oakland tonight at the New Parish. We played there last time we where in the bay with Horse Feathers. It is a great venue. Anyways, here are the Portland shows that look good to me tonight:

Holocene is having a show with Zac Nelson, Brainstorm, and Neal Morgan. This is an album release for Zac Nelson's, Wicked Work it Out. I have not heard it, but I have heard that it is experimental pop. This makes sense to me. He used to play under the name Hexlove. That project was, as I recall, ambient leaning with a lot of drum freak outs. Certainly something that would be categorized as experimental. Rumor has it that copies of the album will be given out at the door. Brainstorm definitely takes a new take on pop music. It fills it with interesting rhythms, cool harmonies, drums, guitar, keys, hand claps, and tuba. The drummer who often plays a keyboard while drumming makes good use of his headset mic. They put out a full length and since then two shorter releases that just keep better and better. Neal Morgan is a drummer. He also likes singing. In his performances he mixes them together in a nice package. Imagine Dirty projectors without any instruments save the drums. This will get you a vague idea of the music that I have heard of his. The show is $5 and starts at 8:30 PM.

Ella Street is having a show with Horace Pickett (Seattle), Racingpaperplanes (Sweden), Bjornstigen (Sweden), and David Kyle & The Invisibles. Racingpaperplanes and Bjornstigen are a few guys from Sweden who used to be in an American Grunge influenced band, Floodhorse, who later both started more acoustic sounding projects. The real reason I am listing this show is David Kyle & The Invisibles. This is David Kyle playing solo. Some of the songs he used to play under this moniker went on to be plashed out in his band Secret Codes. He let me know recently that he has started playing out under this name again as an outlet for his classical guitar based music. I am not sure exactly what it will sound like, but the songs he has up sound pretty cool. The show is $5 and starts at 9 PM.

You won't see me at any of these shows, but you should say hi to someone with dark hair and a beard.

Ben


Brainstorm play at Holocene tonight!