High Notes: The Best Live Music in Portland This Week, Feb. 17

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

John Chandler, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Fish out your beret and teashades, because the Portland Jazz Festival is busting out all over the place. Or you can drop by the Doug Fir for a San Francisco surrealist with a gift for melody. There’s a metal fest for the ages at Hawthorne Theatre, and a converted country star will hold court at Mississippi Studios. Just make sure to take me to the Church on time!

Sonny & The Sunsets

Feb 17 @ 9pm

Popular music is home to more than its fair share of charming eccentrics; Brian Wilson, Jonathan Richman, and Robyn Hitchcock are three names that spring to mind. Being something other than mundane and market driven is a wonderful thing and our artists should be encouraged to spread their creative juices far and wide. Trouble is, a great many would-be troubadours are hampered by an inability to come up with anything close to a catchy tune, and thus get exiled to the fringe, where a few self-righteous obsessives will argue their legacies. San Francisco’s Sonny Smith, and his band the Sunsets, expertly balances lyrical eccentricity (chemically enhanced and otherwise) with first-rate choruses on songs like “She Plays Yo-Yo With My Mind” and “Too Young to Burn.” The band arrives in Portland with a brand new album, ‘Talent Night at the Ashram,’ which might be their most straightforward record to date.

$12. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 

Portland Jazz Festival

Feb 17-Mar 1 

For the next two weeks, we’ll be wall-to-wall with jazz cats of every stripe, ranging from the New Girl From Ipanema, Bebel Gilberto (Feb 18) to fabled Miles Davis bassist Ron Carter (Mar 1), performing with the Benny Green Trio. Stanley Jordan, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and bluesman Lucky Peterson are among the noteworthy visitors, while hardworking locals like Devin Phillips, Tony Pacini, Nancy King, and Ron Steen will be jamming at bars and lounges scattered throughout the land.

Multiple Venues, portlandjazzfestival.org

Napalm Death, Voivod

Feb 19 @ 6pm

It’s been a little over 20 years since England grindcore warriors Napalm Death released the classic ‘Fear, Emptiness, Despair’ album, but the band has not been idle in the interim, forging 11 more riff-frenzied records, including their latest release, ‘Apex Predator—Easy Meat.’ Canadian psych-metal crew Voivod have been visualizing dystopia for more than 30 years, and their post-apocalyptic cover of Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” from the album ‘Nothingface’ has been featured on every metalhead’s mixed tape since 1990.

$15-18. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE 39th Ave. hawthornetheatre.com

Slaid Cleaves

Feb 19 @ 8pm

He may have been raised in Maine, but singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves has lived deep in the heart of Texas since the ’90s, and exudes denim and dust, just like a real country boy. Cut from the same back-roads poetic cloth as Steve Earle or Robert Earl Keen, Cleaves is a keen and empathetic observer of the barroom usual suspects, particularly on set-list standards like “Broke Down” and “Drinkin’ Days.” And lest you think his relocation to Austin was a calculated move to fluff up his country cred, we suggest you give a listen to “Texas Love Song,” in which he earnestly and sincerely pledges his undying love for the Lone Star State, singing, “You’re the barb in my wire.” 

$20. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St.

The Church

Jan 22 @ 8pm

Living fossils that can recall MTV’s heyday are most certainly familiar with this Aussie group’s smash hit, “Under the Milky Way” from 1988, but the entire Church catalogue is chockfull of tuneful treasures worth appraising. Blessed with three fine songwriters and fronted by bassist Steve Kilbey, the Church have more than 20 albums under their belt, including last year’s excellent ‘Further/Deeper.’ What’s remarkable about this band is their modest level of success on the charts, considering the dazzling quality of tingly psychedelic gems like “Ripple” and “Tantalized.”

$25-30. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 

John Chandler has been writing about rock and/or roll for 25 years with The Rocket, Portland Tribune, Portland Monthly, Magnet, Dagger, No Depression, and Puncture. He also writes about beer, booze, and bars for Portland'sBarFly website and plays in a couple goofy bands when the mood strikes him. He can most often be found at the wheel of horrificflicks.com, a review website dedicated to horror movies.

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