portland

One of the most frequented bands here on undomondo is Portland rockers Grails. Somehow they manage to more than one release each year and we feel like you wanna hear all about them, because they deserve it.

Today I found some time to check a good portion of them. Here are some that garnered my attention. Most are indie & folk. Wow, there must be thousands of indie bands right now. Hard to make a name for you in the indie scene nowadays, eh?

Own Records from Luxembourg (whom we mentioned here before), home to acts like Bexar Bexar, Uzi & Ari and Gregor Samsa humbled us with an elegantly designed double CD of a new project by Portland based Aaron Gerber.

Portland’s psychedelic instrumental rock outfit Grails‘ new CD Burning Off Impurities, will be out on April 24 on Temporary Residence, in the meanwhile Important Records has the previously released Black Tar FrequenciesEP’s compiled onto a CD. The name of this gem fits the music very well, because most of the album is dark & fuzzy, or should I say downright “nocturnal”.

Carrying on the good songwriting ethos from the previous post, I should quickly mention Alela Diane to you. Portland’s Holocene Music released her self-released second album in October, after she made 650 copies by hand, that is “sewing lace and paper bags for the case, drawing golden ships, lettering ink, and burning each cd”.

WGoP are a trio from Portland that has Curtis Knapp on piano, Adrian Orange (aka Thanksgiving) on brushed drums and Davis Lee Hooker on double bass. The music has elements of post rock in it, but no guitars so how is it possible to call it rock?

Yay for these Portland boys. Although the 2005 album “With a Cape and a Cane” is generally nice, it makes a peak right with this number.