BLOW PONY
(Rotture, 315 SE 3rd) See My, What a Busy Week!

HOLIDAY FRIENDS, THE WEATHER MACHINE, SNOWBLIND TRAVELER
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) Well now, this is a bill of enjoyable, local-ish acts who live in different-but-similar places on the spectrum of folk, pop, and rock. Snowblind Traveler is Long Island-born, Portland-based singer/songwriter Matt Dorrien, who makes downcast folk and barroom blues for the modern set. His 2014 album, Confederate Burial, will be a perfect soundtrack for any of the gray days ahead of us. The Weather Machine's self-titled album is a cozy combo of frontman Slater Smith's strummy folk songs, his love of alt-rock (i.e., Modest Mouse, the White Stripes), and his band's baroque-pop savvy. Add it all up and it sounds like Idaho songwriter Josh Ritter when he's in full-band-fun-times mode. Finally, Holiday Friends, from Astoria, take straightforward pop-rock songs and dress 'em up with synths, programmed rhythms, and other future-stuff. In a world where mildly electronic, post-MGMT pop-rock bands are huge, Holiday Friends are capable of big things. BEN SALMON