Peter Hook stands front and center on the Showbox stage, shouting out the lyrics of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” as the audience sings along. He points at the crowd, almost blessing them as he delivers the grim chorus from Joy Division’s biggest hit in a commanding monotone. This was the only way the two-hour …
Search Results for: Claude Iosso
Christian Pulisic and Gio Reyna weave through defenders by turns, flicking deft passes into the Netherlands box for … Haji Wright? Brendan Aaronson? Jesus Ferreira? Wright managed a freak score to get the U.S. within a goal of the Dutch, but the absence of a dynamic striker doomed their comeback. Of course, it would have …
I was talking to my kids (14-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy) the other day about music and I for some reason mentioned Kate Bush. My daughter’s jaw dropped and she said, “You know about Kate Bush? How did you become hip?” Well, I then mirrored her, with the jaw and almost the same sentence. Yes, …
“Is this really happening?” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy asked after the band played its first song on the imposing main stage at the Hard Rock Hotel near Cancun, Mexico. After a hiatus forced by the pandemic, Wilco was hosting a weeklong “Sky Blue Sky” music festival for the second time. Organized long before the omicron …
Voodoo Doughnut, Portland’s famous purveyor of zany confections, was offering a green and gold sprinkle doughnut in honor of the Timbers hosting the MLS Cup Saturday. I should talk about the final, in which the Timbers fell to New York City FC in a penalty shootout … but doughnuts just seem more interesting. Sour grapes …
By Claude Iosso If there had been a roof at Marymoor Park the other night, Modest Mouse would have blown it off. With controlled fervor, the alt-rock combo delivered choice anthems from their vast repertoire, including the singles from this year’s The Golden Casket. Thousands of joyous fans, who spanned multiple generations, danced and sang …
Photo by Craig Mitchelldyer / Portland Timbers Quoting former NFL coach Jim Mora from his famous postgame rant is kind of a cheap shot, but after the Portland Timbers fell 6-2 to archrival Seattle Sounders at home Sunday night, it’s apt. Despite an uneven season so far, the Timbers are still in line, somehow, for …
Lionel Messi’s departure from Barcelona, which somehow seemed shocking and inevitable at the same time, redrew the world soccer map. The club, at the sport’s pinnacle just six years ago, is in disarray, with serious financial problems and an underwhelming roster. When the greatest soccer player of all time signed with Paris Saint-Germain two days …
On May 29, mighty Manchester City will take on fellow heavyweight Chelsea in the final of the European Champions League, but the soccer match could have featured scintillating Ajax battling Leipzig. It is the glory of the Champions League and Europe’s domestic leagues that the minnows can swim with the tunas. Give a hearty cheer …
It’s David Byrne’s birthday, so a fitting time to celebrate the deliciously paradoxical “Listening Wind,” one of Talking Heads’ lesser known gems on Remain in Light. Of all the polyrhythms and African incantations on that record, “Wind” is the most hypnotic. “The wind in my heart, the wind in my heartThe dust in my hair, …
When Fantastic Negrito shills, he does it with integrity. The Oakland blues-soul man has released “Root City,” an anthem for Oakland Roots SC, a three-year-old professional soccer team, and there are no sly, subliminal nudges for your custom in his video. He’s wearing a Puma tracksuit and sneakers in some shots, and he actually points out …
(Jim Steinman, left, with Meat Loaf, right) How magical was Jim Steinman? Well, he wrote brutally honest songs about men lusting after women, gave them orchestral bombast and delivery by the mighty-lunged Meat Loaf, and they’ve been wedding reception standards ever since. Look up “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad” on YouTube, and people are still …
It was just a detail in our itinerary my wife slipped in – when we return from a three-week Mexican vacation, we’ll take five dogs with us. Whaaaat!? Yes, volunteers with Mexican and Canadian rescue groups had taken care of the details; we would just be “flight angels” (mules), chaperones on the aerial leg of …
Fantastic Negrito, the Oakland blues howler who’s already scored two Grammys in the last five years, mixes in a healthy dose of retro soul on his third album, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? All that groovin’ sweetens his gritty street tales. “How Long,” already released as a single for the record set to drop …
Listening to the Innocence Mission’s latest album – See You Tomorrow – is like waking from a delicious dream. You feel profound joy and sorrow, but can’t explain why. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania folk trio, which has now released 12 studio albums over a 30-year career, doesn’t vary from their distinctive, low-key sound, but the songs …
The stress of COVID-19 makes me think about smoking. Venturing into the kitchen for lunch break — my wife trying to broker a compromise between the quarreling kids — I have this thought of going out to the back porch and cooking a butt. I’d look off into the distance in a knowing, cynical way. …
You’ve got to listen to “All My Happiness is Gone” as soon as you damn well can. It’s the best mating of bouncy, propulsive melody with tragic lyrics since the Smiths disbanded. From David Berman, the front man of Silver Jews, who killed himself this year, it’s got lyrics that resonate perhaps too well for …
Brian Schmetzer can be so unassuming and professorial at times, it seems hard to believe he is head coach of a professional soccer team. Pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, he tosses respectful bouquets at opposing coaches and players before and after games. Could this really be the shepherd of a …
The Triple Door is a most glorious and peculiar place to take in a rock’n’roll show. Its tidy stage, with perfect colored lights and even more perfect amplification is only matched by the classy seats that all come with their own tables for dining and drinking. It can’t seat much more than 150, which makes …
I never had a Cars record. They were always on the radio, from 1977, when “My Best Friend’s Girl” made listeners laugh and dance at the same time, through the ‘80s, when “Shake It Up,” “You Might Think” and “Drive” left us gyrating on the line with their irresistible hooks. Ric Ocasek’s passing this week …
If Car Seat Headrest were a car seat headrest, they would no longer fit in a Toyota Prius. A solo project of singer/songwriter Will Toledo in the early years of this decade, Headrest is now a touring juggernaut, with seven members. Blistering sets at the Showbox over the weekend show Headrest now belongs in a …
Only in America do teams find it better to be hot than good, floundering for weeks at a time only to make a run in the playoffs and claim the trophy. In those crazy other countries, the team that wins the most games takes the league title. So little imagination. I bet they measure things …
Like the entire tournament it culminated, the World Cup final Sunday was a wild one, featuring an own goal, controversial use of video review and lots of scoring, with France defeating feisty Croatia, 4-2. What we may remember best though about this World Cup in the years to come is the emergence of French phenom …
That is the question. These guys can rattle on with the erudition of a college professor about a long reliever for the local baseball team or a minute change in the football’s catch rule, but dare talk about the real futbol, and sports radio guys will ruthlessly mock you. Should they be foolhardy enough to …
Like the next generation of replicants, “Blade Runner 2049” has some new gadgets, but it doesn’t measure up to the previous model. It’s dialed up the dystopia and alienation to epic levels, but the heart that pounded in the original “Blade Runner” is hard to find. Brace yourself for the third movie in the trilogy. …
On the way to forging his own way in music, Van Morrison penned a sentimental ditty called “Brown Eyed Girl.” Sung with gusto over a simple, three-chord melody, the song remains Morrison’s biggest hit 50 years later. “Brown Eyed Girl” is still sung around campfires and is an oldies station staple, but I think it’s …
TORONTO – Seattle Sounders FC have been one of Major League Soccer’s best regular-season teams ever since the club joined MLS in 2009, but that excellence never yielded a championship. Ironically, the Sounders finally landed their first MLS Cup tonight after their worst season. Multiple times over the years the Rave Green have dominated until …
The Skatalites are unique — the originators of a whole genre of music over their brief existence in Jamaica in the mid-sixties and then a stalwart institution supporting that syncopated movement since their reunion in 1983. Members come and go (50 years down the road, many of the founders are gone forever), but that dance …
After the United States’ 2-1 Copa America quarterfinal victory over Ecuador Thursday night, the team jogged and sprinted by turns around the pitch. It may have been helpful conditioning, but they looked like they were running for sheer joy, reveling in the cheers from the fans still filling half of CenturyLink Field here in soccer-mad …
Has the news of the greatest underdog story in all sports reached you? Leicester City have been perennial doormats in the English Premier League, when they haven’t been relegated to the second or even third tiers. This season most predicted them to finish near last and be relegated again. They were 5,000-to-1 odds to win …