Last year was a bit of a slump for Eugene’s show scene.  Aaron Carter inexplicably came back twice, as did the usual mob of rappers frequenting the W.O.W. Hall (Earl Sweatshirt, Schoolboy Q). But a promising collection of touring artists, as well as some great local acts you can’t miss, are coming through in the next few months.  Here are just a few:

McDonald Theatre (1010 Willamette St.)

March 15: Tycho, the man who single-handedly duped an entire generation of alt-bros into becoming fans of easy-listening music, will be in town. ($20 advance, $25 door.  All ages.  Doors at 7, show at 8.)

March 20: Psychedelic electronic group Shpongle plays. Mind-bending drugs are encouraged, but not mandatory. ($20 advance, $25 door. All ages. Doors at 7, show at 8.)

May 7: Sax-playing DJ Griz, a very talented individual who would prefer not to be called “the Kenny G of dubstep,” performs.  ($15-$20 advance, $25 door.  16+.  Doors at 7, show at 8.)

May 26: Shakey Graves, a man whose music sounds exactly like it was made by a dude named “Shakey Graves,” performs. ($15. All ages. Doors at 7, show at 8.)

June 3: Neutral Milk Hotel performs. Snatch up tickets quick, because there’ll always be a few hundred people whose lives In The Aeroplane Over The Sea changed more than yours. ($35 advance, $40 door. All ages. Doors at 7, show at 8.)

W.O.W. Hall (291 W. 8th Ave)

March 19: Talib Kweli and Immortal Technique perform. No word on whether or not Immortal Technique will play that ten-minute song about that guy’s mom your friends always try to creep you out with. ($22 advance, $25 door. All ages. Doors at 8, show at 9.)

April 22: Boston frat-rapper Sammy Adams performs. Come for the music, stay for the hunky bros.  ($20 advance, $25 door. All ages. Doors at 7, show at 8.)

May 5: Dan Deacon, America’s second-favorite red-bearded, cartoon-loving man-child with glasses, performs. Just don’t ask him about Adventure Time. ($15 advance, $18 door.  All ages.  Doors at 8, show at 9.)

May 7:  Unknown Mortal Orchestra returns to Eugene.  Not an actual orchestra, but they are mortal, so catch ‘em while they’re alive!  ($15.  All ages.  Doors at 8, show at 9.)

May 26:  Jenny Lewis touches down from the cosmos. Expect to cry, either because of the music or because you’ll never own a rainbow suit as awesome as hers. ($25 advance, $28 door.  All ages.  Doors at 7, show at 8.)

Cozmic Pizza (199 W 8th St.)

February 24: Crystal Bowersox and her blond dreads of doom perform in a town where she should fit in perfectly. ($26-$28.  All ages.  Doors at 7, show at 8.)

March 7: Local fave Soul Vibrator performs. At 10 bucks, it’s a lot cheaper than an actual vibrator!  ($5-$10.  All ages.  Doors at 7, show at 8.)

April 12: Crunk producer Crizzly, who probably has plenty to talk about with Griz about being mistaken for an indie pop band, performs. ($17 Early Bird General Admission. $21 General Admission. All ages. Doors at 7, show at 8.)

Drake dropped his latest mixtape/album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late by surprise on Friday, Feb. 13. After immersing themselves in 68 minutes of new music from the Canadian hip-hop megastar, two of our writers – Daniel Bromfield and Hailey Gellar – sat down to transcribe their thoughts.

Daniel’s take:

Drake considers If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late a mixtape–but don’t come looking for levity. This is Drake at his most agitated, which makes sense given that he and fellow Cash Money signees Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj haven’t exactly been happy with the label as of late. Drake has been complaining about fame for his entire career; now, he has a concrete excuse, and he sounds more miserable than ever.

Drake’s biggest album Take Care was opulent but melancholy, showcasing a character whose wealth couldn’t heal the wounds inside. If You’re Reading This makes being famous seem more like answering a lot of phone calls, whether with his label, his significant other(s) or, on the arresting “You & The 6,” his concerned mom. This is stressful, pacing-up-and-down-hallways music. There’s little for the listener to sink into; save for moments of piano-drenched beauty, the sound palette is based on sharp drums and Drake’s even sharper voice.

He’s never sounded this piercing before, and it can be hard to spend a full album with his voice. If You’re Reading This only has two guests: Lil Wayne and Travi$ Scott. Both sound a lot like Drake. Drake’s mic-hogging becomes irritating after a while, which makes the plushy, relatively vocal-lite “Wednesday Night Interlude” all the more welcome. But with more guests, the album might have sacrificed its introspection. (Wayne is forgivable, as he’s Drake’s main co-conspirator in the Cash Money rebellion, but a Nicki verse wouldn’t have hurt.)

There’s speculation that If You’re Reading This was Drake’s ploy to get out of his Cash Money contract. Though the record feels too complete to dismiss as nothing more than a spiteful fuck-the-industry album, I can get behind this theory. It’s Drake’s least commercial album, and the digs at Cash Money are aplenty. But this isn’t Drake making the music he wants to make, free from label expectations. Rather, he’s making the music he needs to make to vent his frustration before he gets back to selling platinum records.

Follow Daniel Bromfield on Twitter @bromf3

Hailey’s take:

To all of our surprise, Drake’s newest release came out in a mixtape style on Feb. 13. The album has sold more copies in its first three days than any other album in 2015 except for Taylor Swift’s record-breaking 1989, according to the Billboard website. The tapes are dedicated to the rapper’s life and woes back in his hometown of Toronto, as well as his mother in the tribute and monologue titled, “You & The 6.”

Fans speculate wildly as to whether there will be another release before his much anticipated Views From The 6 album, or if this is just the sneak preview. Will this be the end of his career with Cash Money Records? Answers, please!! For now, I will continue to jam out to his unreal R&B skills with the 17 passionate songs we were given.

Drake has come a long way since his first, most recognizable 2009 mixtape, So Far Gone. This album shows a new side of Drake we have yet to see before. The openings of the songs are powerful and authoritative, flowing into a dark, even harsh, lyrical masterpiece. He wants us to join him on this journey of finding himself, as he steps away from who he is expected to be. “I used to get teased for for being black…Now, I’m here and I’m not black enough,” these lyrics speak to how confrontational he has decided to make his work. “If I die, I’m a legend” is his way of saying he does not want just any ordinary or temporary title. He wants to go down as someone people will remember and talk about forever – a legend.

The premier track off the mixtape may be “Energy,” for its powerful and upbeat sound that resembles his classic anthem “0 to 100,”  but also for its empowering lyrics and shout-outs to haters that you can hear if you listen carefully.

Follow Hailey Geller on Twitter @hgeller30

Ever since P.W. Elverum evolved the Microphones into Mount Eerie with the cosmogonical opera Mount Eerie, his world has gotten smaller and more mundane. He’s gone from talking about the universe (Mount Eerie) to the elements (Wind’s Poem) to his hometown/muse of Anacortes, Washington (the spectacular Clear Moon). Sauna, his new album, opens in a sauna. But the way Elverum sings about it, you’d think it was the most profound thing ever.

Mount Eerie albums tend to open with lengthy trials-by-fire that ensure you fully commit to the album. Mount Eerie opened with ten minutes of drums, his recent Ocean Roar with ten minutes of organs. Sauna‘s title track and opener is ten minutes of ambient drone with sparse vocals, and it distinguishes itself by actually being more accessible than the music that ensues. It’s easier to sink into than anything Elverum’s ever made, save some of the softer parts of Clear Moon.

After “Sauna,” the music becomes rockier, in terms of both rock music and being jagged and impenetrable. Elverum switches between metal (“Boat”), indie rock (“Turmoil”), folk (“Dragon,” “Pumpkin”), and quasi-Steve Reich arpeggios that are probably just the product of laziness (“[something]“). Some of these tracks are clunkier than others, but hearing them all together makes for an experience not unlike the ultimate greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts record, The White Album.

The settings and actions are surprisingly ordinary. Elverum drinks coffee, stares at garbage on the ground, lounges in an airport and reads a ton of books. On “Youth,” he explicitly sets the events of the album in 2014, nullifying the “ancient” descriptor often applied to his music. But he’s still perpetually surrounded by the beyond, and it’s during the moments when the listener is made aware of this that Sauna becomes most poignant.

“Dragon” epitomizes this. Elverum takes the backseat on this one, giving up the mic to singers Allyson Foster and Ashley Eriksson. Their voices are plaintive and ghostly together, and the lyrics are almost aggressively evocative. I found the line “a tractor idling two blocks away” particularly arresting. The distance gives the line its power; this mundane object is still part of a vast, unknowable universe. Does Elverum walk towards the tractor? We’ll never know. I doubt it.

On “Pumpkin,” Elverum is fascinated by a pumpkin he finds on the beach, split open by the sea against the rocks. There’s a real tenderness in the way he says “orange,” and it’s evident he’s developed a deep love for the thing by the song’s end. The pumpkin becomes at once a cute curiosity and a reminder of the power of nature. He walks home, past bulldozers at dusk, universes forming in his head. The lyrics aren’t poetry, but they scan like it.

It’s these moments that allow the album to transcend its inconsistency. Even Elverum’s failures are interesting, and the gems are distributed equally enough that there isn’t one part of the album that really drags. I’d say this album could be shorter, but Sauna‘s imperfections give it a rough-hewn quality that meshes perfectly with Elverum’s rugged universe. I guess this makes Elverum infallible. If so, great, because if an album like Sauna comes into my life every few years, I’m set.

Listen to the track “Turmoil” off Mount Eerie’s Sauna below.

Minimalism is in vogue again, but Twitter hasn’t caught up yet. “Madonna out-crazied Kanye!” Of course she did. Have you heard Yeezus? Have you heard “Only One?” Kanye doesn’t care about crazy anymore.  Nor did  stoic Beyonce, or a regal Katy Perry poised like Galadriel, or Rihanna singing her guts out in front of a theatre curtain, flanked by two musicians at least as famous as she who seem utterly unaware of that fact. Hell, a performance as mad as Madonna’s almost seems like an anachronism.

Music seemed to come full circle at this year’s Grammys. Nile Rodgers has apparently joined the Illuminati. Paul McCartney is once again relevant, but largely as an accessory to Kanye; Rodgers underwent the same transition with Daft Punk.  The stars that inhabited last year’s Grammys are gone. No Lorde. No Macklemore. No Daft Punk. But daring Kanye! Legendary Paul! Beyonce, fresh off the best pop album of the decade and poised to plan something even bigger! We are on the cusp of something huge.

The Grammys come at the beginning of the year after the one that gives it its source material. This is essentially the 2014 Grammys, which is why the last ceremony was filled with stars (Robin Thicke, Justin Timberlake) that would soon slide off the map. As such, this year’s Grammys reminded us both of what was missing last year (how else could Sam Smith have won so many awards?) and what is to come next year (Rihanna’s album, Kanye’s album–really those two things are enough, and I have a feeling Frank Ocean will crawl out of his cave soon).

Rihanna’s appearance was a breath of fresh air. The Barbadian megastar used to pump out albums at a ’60s-pop-band rate before dropping off the map after 2012′s abysmal Apologetic. If she’s spent this long working on a new album, it’s going to be Thriller status. She got Loud, one of the best pop albums of the 2010s, done in a year. With three years, who knows what she could do? Not to mention that even if “FourFiveSeconds” is on it and every other track is awful we’ll still end up with a better album than Apologetic.

Let’s talk for a moment about Katy Perry. From Left Shark to Princess Leia, whom she seemed to be channeling this year, Perry has taken on increasing relevance as a performer. This contrasts with her trend-hopping music (did anyone involved in the making of “Dark Horse” expect trap to die out as fast as it did?). She’s a born performer, and she’ll die one, too. She’s set for the Vegas stage. This may seem like a condemnation, but she’ll rock it as hard as Elvis ever did. And as a great lover of kitsch, she’ll enjoy it.

The 21st century is upon us. We will blast Skrillex in our retirement homes. We will reprimand our children for whatever absolutely ballistic music they will be listening to when we are middle-aged. Though the Grammys may be stuck in the past, they help us know the future a little bit better. And the future looks good.

Ethos Magazine will hold its sixth annual Bandest of the Bands at the WOW Hall on Feb. 13 to determine which band is truly is the bandest.

The competitors are Dr. Rocket, YamaYama, Face for Radio, Human Ottoman, Mellow Yellow and the Zendeavors. The winner gets coverage from University of Oregon campus radio station KWVA and a guaranteed spot at the 2015 Campus Block Party lineup.

YamaYama is a group composed of veteran musicians, including session musicians and members of the long-running Eugene soul band The Essentials. This is YamaYama’s first Bandest of the Bands, but the band members are not concerned about competition; they’re mostly in it for the show.

“I think, personally, that the idea of music as a competition is kind of silly,” said drummer Merlin Showalter. “But I think it’s gonna be a great showcase of great local music.  I hope people will like it and we’ll make as many fans as possible.”

Eugene glam rock duo Dr. Rocket has been playing shows around town since 2013, and this is also their first Bandest of the Bands. But unlike YamaYama, they’re in it to win.

“Dr. Rocket is out for blood,” said singer-guitarist Nick Carver.

Though they’re relatively green, they’re not worried about being pitted against Bandest of the Bands veterans Face for Radio and the Zendeavors.

“They haven’t won,” said Carver. But they’re going to be facing formidable competition.

The Zendeavors came in second place in the previous Bandest of the Bands, losing to Pluto the Planet. But as recent UO grads, the Zendeavors have spent ample time honing its sound in Portland and in Roseburg, where it has a once-a-month residency at Latin restaurant Salud.

Though singer-guitarist Andrew Rogers and bassist Andrew Poletto have decamped to Portland, drummer Jason Miller and saxophonist Ted Schera remain in Eugene. That hasn’t stopped them.

“We go up to Portland, Ted and I, find a free weekend,” said drummer Jason Miller. “We’ll play seven hours Saturday, seven hours Sunday, play a show on Sunday, then Ted and I just roll back.”

Rogers describes their practice sessions as “boot camps,” and this applies to their as-yet-untitled upcoming debut album as well. The members spent the entire Super Bowl arranging one of their songs.

“It’s nice that all four of us are super driven and have a coherent sound,” said Rogers. “We have a more cohesive vision artistically and in terms of what we want to accomplish.”

But are they in it to win?

“We’re in this to win,” said Rogers. “Also to dance. Mainly to win, though. We’re big on the dancing, too.”

Bandest of the Bands takes place Thursday, Feb. 13 at the WOW Hall. Doors open at 6 p.m., show at 7 p.m. Tickets $3 in advance, $5 at the door.

We’re live-tweeting the Grammys, starting at 8 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.  Follow our music writer Daniel Bromfield on Twitter for the latest updates from the Emerald team.  Daniel Bromfield, Andrea Harvey, and Emerson Malone are our tweeters.

Tweets by Daniel Bromfield: @bromf3

When I first encountered Pluto the Planet in November 2013, the members were on their way to their first gig at the WOW Hall, a milestone for Eugene bands. But their upcoming show with Cambodian-inspired rock band Dengue Fever at the WOW on Saturday, February 7 is their fourth time playing the vaunted venue.  I had a chance to sit with the band members once again to discuss this gig and the trials and tribulations of being on the cusp of bigger fame.

Is playing the W.O.W. Hall even a big thing anymore for y’all?

Dylan Campbell: Yeah, we’re still super excited. I think the thing that makes [the W.O.W. Hall] star-striking is the acts. But the W.O.W. can be really tiny or really huge.  Sometimes you get the same draw as a bar.  But when you get a big band playing, that’s when it’s like, “oh shit, you’re playing the WOW Hall.”

Cameron Lister: It’s nice not to be the biggest band on the bill.

Are y’all officially too big for the bars at this point?

Elliott Fromm: More than straying away from bars, we’re just trying to do higher-profile shows.  We’ve always just wanted to play as much as we could, so we just took any gig we could get. Now we’re trying to limit to one or two big shows a month, so it’s an ordeal to see us instead of just “Pluto the Planet is playing again! At a bar!”

Dengue Fever seems a bit like a strange pairing to me.

EF: I think it’s because we have a bit of world influence.

CL: To be frank, I don’t know who would fit with [Dengue Fever].

EF: Human Ottoman is this experimental jazz fusion thing, and we’re definitely the most pop band. But I think it’s gonna fit alright. Human Ottoman is gonna jam out, and we’re gonna be super high energy and get everyone warmed up for Dengue Fever.

What are your biggest concerns about this show?

DC: I hope people really into the obscurity of other bands will not write us off for being too simple or lighthearted. I hope they can see something more to our band.

Y’all are one of the biggest Eugene bands. What are your biggest concerns about being on the precipice of larger fame?

EF: Doing it prematurely. You only get one chance. You can’t make a Pluto the Planet album that sucks and then put out an awesome album and hope people will forget about that. It’s like having a class where you have three midterms and flunking the first midterm and then acing the other two. You’re still gonna get a C.

CL: I’d also say finding the right place to move.

DC: We’ve talked a lot about L.A., but we’re less concerned about where we go as if it’s the right place at the right time.  We’re not sure where we’re gonna go but we’ve decided we are gonna move somewhere.

Anything else y’all would like to add?

CL: Go Daily Emerald. Come to our other shows. Can we plug some shows? February 20 we’re opening for the Helio Sequence in Bend. Then after that February 26 we’re playing at Sam Bond’s. We’re playing Campus Block Party and the Willamette Valley Music Festival again.

EF: We’re playing an acid wedding. This one’s a private event.

CL: We’re just gonna be out in the woods. He just said “this is one of those things where you can just drop acid.”  I think it’s just gonna be a bunch of free spirits getting hitched.

DC: It’s gonna be a good year for Pluto the Planet.

Dengue Fever and Pluto the Planet play the W.O.W. on Saturday, February 7. Doors at 8, show at 9. Tickets $12 in advance, $14 at the door.  All ages.

It’s a classic college student dilemma: you put some music on to make studying for that midterm slightly more bearable, but you find yourself singing along to every word and end up not getting anything done.

What to do? Luckily, we’ve put together an arsenal of albums for those dreary study days. And for those who aren’t album fans, we’ve compiled the best tracks into a playlist, available online and ready to shuffle or play back to back.

loscil – Coast / Range / Arc. Coast / Range / Arc is about as ambient as it gets – six sheets of sound that don’t really go anywhere but hover around the ears, shifting subtly but imperceptibly. Just about any loscil album is fine study music, but Coast / Range / Arc is the gentlest; at times it acts like a blanket over your ears, at others like a bed of sound you can sink in.

See also: Gas – Pop, Biosphere – Cirque

Roedelius – Selbstportrait VI. With a name like Hans-Joachim Roedelius, it’d be easy to mistake the German musician for an arch composer. But his Selbstportrait albums are devoted to lighthearted sound sketches, and the sixth installment is my personal favorite. It’s amazing in how much sonic ground it covers while acting as a little murmur in the corner of the mind.

See also: Jürgen Müller – Science of the Sea, Bing & Ruth – Tomorrow Was The Golden Age

Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering. Vashti Bunyan is ostensibly a folk singer, but she’s less focused on intricate lyricism than on creating a lush, pastoral mood with her simple arrangements and haunting vocals. Put Lookaftering on headphones in the library and you’ll feel like you’re doing your homework in a sunlit British inn.

See also: John Fahey – The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick, Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left

Voices From The Lake – Voices From The Lake. There are two versions of this ambient techno classic — the “regular” version and a 70-minute mix of the tracks into a single composition. The latter is by far the more satisfying listening experience, taking you from soundworld to soundworld so subtly as for the changes to be practically imperceptible.

See also: Donato Dozzy – Plays Bee Mask, Luomo – Vocalcity

The xx – xx.  It’s a classic, and you may know all these songs already if you were into alternative music about five years ago. But the spacious pop tunes that populate the great British indie band’s debut are perfect for studying.  Producer Jamie xx’s masterful use of empty space makes for songs that are at once catchy and unobtrusive. I can get a lot done when The xx is on.

See also: Burial – Street Halo

Follow Daniel Bromfield on Twitter @bromf3

Kevin Parker must have really tried. He probably held out his hand, meekly saying “Stop!” as Pond tacked another extra section onto one of its compositions. Pond did not heed him, and in his awkwardness Parker felt dreadfully sorry for himself. He went upstairs to alternate between Adderall and pot, pacing in circles all the while. And Pond continued jamming. And jamming and jamming and jamming.

I imagine this scenario because judging by the content of Man It Feels Like Space Again, the latest album from the Tame Impala offshoot Pond, nobody involved in the process of making this album seems to know how to write a pop song. But Kevin Parker, mastermind of the mighty Tame Impala, sure knows how to write a pop song (look no further than “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” – actually, do look further, because Tame Impala is the shit.)

But the songs on Man It Feels Like Space Again meander, drift and take on extra sections like hitchhikers.  And Parker, as producer, has failed to curb this band’s whims.

Great ideas wander complacently into the distance. As soon as the thrill of hearing them transition into funk, or rock n’ roll or even woozy avant-Beatles sound collage, it dissipates. It’s a bit like Houses of the Holy if Led Zeppelin’s strings were pulled by someone with a less dexterous hand than Jimmy Page and fronted by a far less charismatic creature than Robert Plant.

I’d be intrigued by an individual song if it showed up at a party or on a playlist, perhaps why I enjoyed the opening track “Waiting Around For Grace” so much. But nine in a row make for a tedious experience, especially given that these songs needlessly stretch far longer than they should. It could have had nine songs that didn’t drag. Or 11 songs that didn’t drag. But this thing is impenetrable even in the background of a college living room.

Pond has potential. It has a keen ear for sound, and its grooves are good while they’re interesting – which isn’t for long. But this is a band in need of a brutal producer, not a quiet, nice introvert like Kevin Parker. I worry Pond may suffer from a lack of self-esteem (that album title is terribly self-conscious, if only accurate because this album is every bit as empty and formless as the cosmos.) But this is Pond’s sixth album. It amazes me that these guys haven’t honed their sound by now.

High school bands are a rare sight in Eugene’s college- and bar-oriented music scene. But in three years of activity, Girls Punch Bears has attracted a loyal following among Eugene musicians and music fans. As a self-described “existential pop-punk band,” its music has proven a great match for bars like Tiny Tavern as well as the punk-leaning, all-ages venue The Boreal, where it’s played numerous times. The band will play again this coming Friday, Jan. 30.

The “existential pop-punk” descriptor came about in the band’s attempt to break from pop-punk stereotypes.

“Pop-punk has bad connotations that don’t really apply to us too much,” said guitarist Nathan Adams, a freshman at Lane Community College and the only band member not still in high school. “We don’t use the same chord progressions all the time.”

“We break the barrier where punk music isn’t intricate and profound,” said singer Ilee Erickson-Walker, a senior at South Eugene High School. “A lot of people think punk is just about being loud.”

Indeed, the band’s style is far more complex than that of your run-of-the-mill punk band. The tracks on their self-titled EP, recorded last year at Telos Studios in West Eugene, feature synthesizers, elaborate dynamic changes and multiple movements. Yet the band is disillusioned with the clean production Telos provides and have opted instead to work with Nick Steiner of Tyranno Tut for their as-yet-undetermined next release, aiming for a grittier sound.

But pop-punk isn’t the only field in which the band intends to challenge conceptions. Erickson-Walker is one of the few female vocalists among the Eugene rock scene, and she often finds herself stereotyped accordingly.

“As a female singer in an all-boys band, I get compared to a lot of other female singers, and all I have in common with them is we’re in [otherwise] all-male bands,” said Erickson-Walker. “Hayley Williams, Gwen Stefani, [Debbie Harry from] Blondie. They all say, ‘oh my god, Walker is a drum prodigy… and you sound like Gwen Stefani!’”

But it’s not just the media. Erickson-Walker often finds herself the recipient of unwanted attention from venue patrons – many of them much, much older than her.

“They’ll shake my hand and put their head almost on my shoulder,” Erickson-Walker said. “I’m just thinking, ‘just because it’s loud doesn’t mean you have to get super-extra-close!’”

Girls Punch Bears sees this as a societal problem, and though the members don’t describe the group as a “political band” per se, they see music as a good way to inform the world of these issues – and if not, as a respite from them.

“There’s a lot of shit you put up with in life; you hurting yourself and others hurting you,” said Erickson-Walker. “With music you’re not hurting anyone. You’re building yourself up, and you’re building other people up too – they don’t have to hurt as much if they can relate to your music.”

And for all the undesirable forms of attention she receives during performances, she still sees the stage as something therapeutic.

“All the time I feel like I can’t breathe, especially with high anxiety,” she said. “I’m always shaking. But when I get onstage, it’s my time to not give a fuck.”