It's day three of Portland's MusicFest Northwest and we're starting to feel it, though our spirits are high as Zach headed off to the big show at Pioneer Courthouse Square with Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Marketa Irglova and Iron and Wine. Sounds incredible right? That's just the beginning, the night of music didn't really start until nine ending whenever we damn well felt like it (which was around 2am). What an incredibly wonderful night of entertainment and, we're pretty sure, one of the best nights of the festival. more ›

The Frames have been an influential rock band for a very long time, as a matter of fact this is the 20th year that the band has been together. They're based out of Dublin, Ireland and so tend to be overshadowed by their musical big brother U2. They've made a solid name for themselves in Europe as well as North America despite that fact. However, you may not have heard The Frames so much as you've heard Glen Hansard or perhaps his side project The Swell Season. Glen was one of two main characters (but basically playing himself in personality and charm) in the movie Once. It was an independent film that found international fame due to it's heart and beauty both visually and musically; if you haven't seen it, we highly recommend you watch it over the long weekend. The other lead in the film was Marketa Irglova, a singer/songwriter from the Czech Republic (also basically playing herself in personality and charm). Out of that film came an amazing group called The Swell Season. All the music in the film was written and performed by the duo and was so successful they decided to pursue it as a band. After a couple years they decided it was time to move on, and thankfully Glen fell back to working with The Frames (though, most of them were helping out with the backing instrumentation in The Swell Season anyway). more ›

You begin to see why a girlfriend might leave him. "And how in the world did you come / to be such a lazy love?" he sings with Cat Stevens' flair for passing judgment, or pleads for time with a barbed hook on the line: " Maybe if you slowed down for me / I could see you're only telling / lies, lies, lies." more ›

If you saw the film Once, you know that one day Irishman Glenn Hansard met Czechwoman Marketa Irglova and they made beautiful music together. Actually, there's a whole backstory there. Martha Wainwright opens for them tonight at the Moore. more ›

About three lives ago, when we were living in a scientific research station in Ecuador, we watched The Postman (Il Postino) with a group of Westerners. After the movie, which is one of our favorites, we were sitting there, wondering why the room had suddenly gotten all dusty, when a privileged teenage British hipster/tourist named Aelys (pronounced like Alice, but her parents preferred the Welsh spelling) announced that she hadn't liked the movie because it was too slow. Charlie's Angels 2, she liked, but not this. more ›