PARTY BOYZ ZINE RELEASE: PSYCHOMAGIC, IS/IS, BED (Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) Tonight, local podcast crew Party Boyz are teaming up with the folks at Treefort Music Festival to throw a doozy of a winter beach party. The event functions as the official Portland Treefort launch event as well as a release for the second issue of the Party Boyz zine. Self-described slow-fi trio Bed get the evening started with their rumbling blend of shoegaze-leaning pop. Next are enchanting witch-gazers Is/Is, who recently announced that they'll be heading into Jackpot! Studio to record, making tonight's show the perfect opportunity to get a glimpse of some new material. Finally, the tireless garage-rock merrymakers in Psychomagic return to the Mississippi Studios stage; the band headlined the venue back in December when they released their excellent sophomore album, Bad Ideas, so they should be loose and ready to get extra freaky this go-around. CHIPP TERWILLIGER
CONNOR GARVEY, JEFFREY MARTIN (Alberta Street Pub, 1036 NE Alberta) Jeffrey Martin's music is not widely known, which is a shame, because he might be the best songwriter in Portland. With lyrics that read like Raymond Carver stories and a voice that's one breath away from breaking completely apart, Martin's songs are beautiful, sparse, and utterly devastating. His most recent album, Dogs in the Daylight, was released last August on Portland's Fluff and Gravy label, and the 15-song album is a testament to a songwriter's enduring power to wreak havoc on the listener. On "Draw the Line," Martin doesn't so much sing as sigh: "You don't remember making all those plans, but I do/And you don't remember promising to never do it again, but I do/Now you're down on your knees one more time/And I don't know where to draw the line." If there is any justice in the world, Martin's music will soon reach a wider audience and inflict devastation on a much larger scale. SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY
CHEAP GIRLS, RESTORATION, CHRIS FARREN, HARD GIRLS (Dante's, 350 W Burnside) I'll never understand why Lansing, Michigan's Cheap Girls are so often lumped in with modern pop-punk. Frankly, it's a huge insult to a band that in no way evokes any of that egregious bullshit. Superficially, there's not a whole lot punk about Cheap Girls in the first place: They remain stubbornly attached to the mid-tempo, major-key template established with their frequently brilliant first record, 2009's My Roaring Twenties. But palpably angsty singer/bassist/songwriter Ian Graham's pop penmanship improves markedly with each release, and on the group's latest, last year's Famous Graves, the songs are more concise and affecting than ever before (call-to-arms opener "Slow Nod"; "Man in Question"), bringing to mind the best aspects of '90s radio-rock bands like the Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms, and Counting Crows (the elephant in the room is that Graham more-than-sorta sounds like Adam Duritz). Also playing are San Jose punk staples Hard Girls, whose latest record A Thousand Surfaces was one of the best punk albums of 2014. MORGAN TROPER
AYEM RAY-DIO, CHICHARONES, MY-G, MISTA CHIEF (Alhambra Theatre, 4811 SE Hawthorne) Los Angelenos Abstract Rude and Myka 9, core members of influential golden-age hiphop collective Freestyle Fellowship, have recently joined forces as the throwback backpacking duo AyeM Ray-DIO. And how does the material on their self-titled, Bandcamp-released album stack up against their celebrated mid-'90s output? By old-school metrics like breath control, mic technique, Seuss-shaming rhyme schemes, and speed of flow, these guys haven't lost a step. Heads fiending for pre-Gorillaz Del the Funky Homosapien or Project Blowed-style multisyllabic rap could do worse than jams like "KnowNotMentis" or "Weight Gain." KYLE FLECK
Senior Editor Ned Lannamann writes about pop culture, music, film, TV, books, travel, tech, food, drink, outdoors, politics, Portland, and other things.
