When I moved to Portland in 2007, I was eager to find a band that I could impress my visiting friends with. I needed a band that played regularly enough, and that kept some sort of steady, experimental edge over their bill-sharers. It took about a year after Sad Horse formed, but I eventually caught one of their performances in the summer of 2008. They blew through their set, which consisted of about 10 songs, all lasting a minute and a half at the very most. With warped time signatures, simple driving drumbeats, and manic guitar lines to match the yelping of this insane duo, I knew I had found my impressive band. My friends never did visit me, but I didn't care. I would still go out and see Sad Horse every chance I got. With that said, I think we should all welcome Sad Horse back home from their tour in Japan on Friday, November 16 at the World Famous Kenton Club. It's free. – Edgar Paleo

Born in a small Oregon town, Laura Gibson seems to be a nature girl. Her work is ethereal. Her lyrics could be about relationships, to herself or songs written to the forests. Her voice is balmy with a vintage treble, whether covering a flirty "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, playing as an acoustic folk and flower girl, or singing songs like sea ballads, rising eerily from rocky coasts and creeping into the terrior. After a Euro/Tel-Aviv/Ugandan tour with Indie Mariachi band, Calexico, Gibson has returned to her native lands. She laid down a gospel style track for an album benefiting Deschutes River Conservancy, had a bonus track, “The Carob Trees”, featured on NPR and released her new album, La Grande. The album is a continued journey along Oregon's topography, in part inspired by the town of La Grande and history within the Wallowa Valley. Songs such as "Milk Heavy, Pollen Eyed" offer the enchantment we know of Gibson, but much of the album lays down a more classic western styling with brushy percussion and mysterious growls and whispers under the songstress's vocals. She is currently touring with the organic family of Typhoon who play a multi-instrumental set with 12 or more people on stage or sometimes in trees. Hopefully this will lead to collaborations during the show that will also feature local talent Lost Lander at the Crystal Ballroom on November 23rd. - Brandy Crowe 

The Tomorrow People have been running around town since 2009, headed up by Riley Geare and featuring bassist Erik Mimnaugh and Jordan Ruback tearing up the drum set. Geare often helps to lay down tracks for other locals such as Little Volcano and Trio Flux as a sound engineer and is also known to put on a Bowie review with his side project Queen Bitch. The bands now-on-vinyl EP, Rose City Rose, presents influences of Bowie, Queen, classic rock and metal particularly in Geare's keyboarding and guitar notes that ladder along his vocal ballads. Rose lavishes raw, grease lightning style numbers in which Geare belts it out quite beautifully with his guys backing him up in anthem. At times it is heavy metal, at others rock opera. It is a roller coaster of understood track names. The dreamy 1960-70s soundscape of "Universe" makes one starry eyed with harmonies of  oohs and aahs a-plenty, but this gives way to the startling wake-your-ass-up of whaling guitars, unstoppable tempo and utter destruction of "Eternity" only to simmer back down to a slow jam of longing with "Forever". It is fantastical, glittery ROCK. - Brandy Crowe

I'm really enjoying this new Nucular Aminals album. It's called "Start from an End" and the title is very fitting. The album sounds like a sequel to their 2011 7" "Nobody's Man." The first few notes of album opener "Family Barber" don't really touch on any particular feeling, other than a mild tone of creepiness set by their last release. Then, at around the 30 second mark, you are violently pulled into whatever dark, musty basement these people have obviously been practicing in for way too long. After that it's over. You're lost in this music and there's no way out. Their songs feel like tightly wound psych-rock mazes that lead you into rooms with blacked out windows only to rip off the walls and expose you to the hot, slime green light outside. Nucular Aminals play very loud too. This is handy in the live setting because then you're truly living in the strange sci-fi garage galaxy they have created for themselves. Check them out at their record release show at The Know on November 3rd with Tiny Knives and W.Hines for the more than fair price of $5. You'll be glad you did. – Edgar Paleo

Hungry Ghost plays the kind of tight, tastefully constructed songs that can only come from musicians with experience and direction. The self-described “supergroup of obscure ‘90s indie rockers” combines heavy, blues-inspired riffs with a mature understanding of the psychedelic and an apparent need to experiment to create songs that sound simultaneously familiar and esoteric. The guitar tones are dialed with utmost precision and used to channel a chaotic and charged energy placed atop volcanic drumming and steady, smooth bass lines played with complete coordination and synchronicity. It’s easy to get lost in the grainy guitar riffs, and even easier to be woken from your trance by the abrupt breaks in music and the shouting vocals. If this sounds like your kind of show then you’re in luck. Hungry Ghost is bringing their dynamic sound to the fantastic Mississippi Studios for a free show on Saturday, November 3rd. Go and feed the ghost.  – Benjamin Toledo

John Ragel is a serial multitasker, enthusiastically orchestrating songs that are poly-genre and made up of improvised melodies and rhythms as Boy Eats Drum Machine. As a DJ he knows how to drop all kinds of percussion and experiments freely with his turntable and instruments. He is a one-man band, augmenting the tones further with his saxophone skills or guitar chord embellishments. Sometimes the colors of his sounds begin to bleed a bit into an artistic jazz scat break-down, but then something random will unexpectedly drop from above. Excerpts of laughter or cheers from his audience fall into the track perfectly and return it to its journey of beat-box/ pop-rock ear candy. He shifts light-heartedly on stage between electronics, instruments and vocals, and seems to purely enjoy playing music, having created six albums with additional compilations of bonus material to date. In his latest release, The Battle, the smooth pitch of Ragel's voice cites religion, politics, and temptation but not without laser pews and Nintendo noises whirring overhead. Boy Eats Drum Machine will be celebrating the release of The Battle at Burnside Brewing Company's Night of the Living Ales. Local electronic spook Purse Candy and the adorable musings of Oh, Darling will also be performing along with the added Halloween raucous of ghoulish go-go dancers and craft brews. Watch out for Ragel as Bowie. – Brandy Crowe

 When listening to Charts, I can’t help but imagine myself at a low lit, gum popping, high-school dance of a by-gone time. There are guys in fancy blazers playing questionably appropriate rock-n-roll for the kids. Then someone spikes the punch, and I dash off in my bobby socks to wave a scarf at a night time drag race and smoke lots of cigarettes. Ok, so in my research I found that there had been a 1950's doo-wop band named The Charts and perhaps this influenced me as I listened to Charts (no "the"). They do have a classic sound: a lo-fi buzz of burly bass (Andrew Clyde) and drum kicks (Josh Smith), all slicked up with romantic strikes of guitar strings and the twangy, sometimes punky vocals of Michael Rowan. There are rockabilly and punk elements, perhaps influenced by Ween, The Violent Femmes, or Suicidal Tendencies, that give them an intentional lilt, such as the warped "We Got it Good" off of The Eggy Tape EP. The trio's latest work, Tease, continues in this drawl. The sound is heavy, yet off-beat and sweet, with a few tracks having the added harmonies of a female singer. The band has been rumored to play a swanky house show or two and has been busy playing with The We Shared Milk, jamming on the streetcar, and performing as part of a special PDX Pop Now! fund drive for KBOO community Radio. With Halloween season in Portland at hand, they are set to play a seasonal set of haunted pop songs like Slow Down Zombie(Your Eating Too Fast), How Did You Get So Dead, and more, for Record Room's 2nd Anniversary party this Saturday. - Brandy Crowe

 Earnest and tightly-wound guitar that weaves between lighthearted post-rock and nuanced prog-grunge, The North Wind's guitar work on Mirror Lake is showcased like a snake winding across wet rock with it's tongue flickering, no tail in sight. These songs never fall into the self-indulgent swells of delay-drenched drama that characterize their contemporaries; the pedal board is reigned in, and these songs move forward to a melodic closure that is equally rewarding and provocative. The atmospheric calm gives way to calamities of distorted chord progressions layered with shattered crystals of clear-to -the bottom counter melodies. The North Wind's rhythms keep the purposefully-meandering chords in a tight framework, and threaten to take the songs to ever-greater heights. Simultaneously blissful and workman-like in its guitar craft, this EP rewards multiple listens and attention to its delicate movement and syrup-thick moments like the impressive closing track "She Said." - Stephen Shoup

October 25th at The Know with 1939 Ensemble

Weinland's winding and wistful melodies, gracious harmonies, and minimal arrangements elicit a nostalgia for something you may not quite have experienced, but feels like a kaleidoscope passed from the collective unconscious. The vignettes are overexposed; smiles are present just long enough to fade. There's no mondo cheer here, but these tracks make you feel ready and encouraged for healing from some doom sure to come; that kiss goodbye, or a driving straight off the cliff ahead--but only because you were distracted by the shape of a strange cloud in a clear sky. Their songs breathe and leave enough play between the songwriter-driven choruses for dashes of air organ, flawlessly-toned guitar, and keyboards that alternately laugh and drone. Transfixing and delicate, Weinland's songs sit down and remind you to "own up to what you've done." - Stephen Shoup

October 26th and 27th at Mississippi Studios