Tonight is the Stranger’s Young Ones showcase!

The Young Ones at Neumo’s and Sole Repair (Music) Over the last year, The Stranger’s music staff has combed through hundreds of local bands to find our favorite eight. We call them the Young Ones: the Pharmacy, Talbot Tagora, Truckasauras, the Moondoggies, Throw Me the Statue, the Physics, PWRFL Power, and Sleepy Eyes of Death. We adore their music, predict they’ll have a collectively amazing 2008, and salute their efforts with a big ol’ party at Neumo’s and Sole Repair. Even better: The $5 door charge goes directly to benefit Real Change. Last year’s Young Ones Dyme Def and Arthur & Yu return to headline. Be there. (Neumo’s, 925 E Pike St, and Sole Repair, 1001 E Pike St, www.thestranger.com/youngones. 8 pm, $5, 21+.) by Megan Seling

This show will be fantastic. But there’s other stuff going on too, and I should be fair and mention it. So here we go…

This week David Schmader interrogated Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. Then, David Schmader interviewed himself about what a shitty interview Stephin Merrit is. An excerpt of the hilarious outcome is below, you can read the whole thing here.

_{Art by Kyle T. Webster}

This week’s Interrogation was supposed to be an interview with Stephin Merritt. It didn’t go so well. The last time you tried to interview him, at Bumbershoot in 2000, didn’t go so well either, right?

The Magnetic Fields came to play Bumbershoot, and the organizers asked if I’d be up for moderating a “songwriters salon” featuring Stephin Merritt and Sally Timms of the Mekons. I love both bands, so I said yes. A couple of days before the event, Timms had a family emergency and had to bail, so instead of moderating a discussion between Timms and Merritt, I ended up doing a one-on-one, live-onstage interview with Merritt, and it was a fucking disaster.

What happened?

Very little. At the time of the Bumbershoot interview, I was completely infatuated with 69 Love Songs—when I wasn’t listening to it, I was thinking about it, and when I wasn’t doing either, I was swimming through the related media coverage: the Village Voice cover story, the Terry Gross Fresh Air interview, Merritt’s past writings for Time Out New York, everything I could find. I was a freak, and my rabid fandom made me the worst interviewer in the world.

The Magnetic Fields play Town Hall tonight and tomorrow night. Both shows are very, very sold out.

Also tonight:

Harvey Danger
(Triple Door) If you need any proof that Harvey Danger’s big song from 10 years ago still means something to people, that its center of gravity holds, that it will never die, all you have to do is go to the gym. Or wait long enough in the lodge at Steven’s Pass. Or turn on the radio in Los Angeles. Or watch that movie it’s in. Or that British TV show it’s the theme song for. It’s always playing somewhere in the world, but it’s always ripped out of context. Which is why this weekend’s two-night run at the Triple Door will be so wholly satisfying. The first night features the band reproducing Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? in its entirety, with assorted B-sides; the second has them tackling King James Version and Little by Little. It’s a history party. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Atlas Sound, White Rainbow, Valet, Dormant
(High Dive) What you already know: Atlas Sound is Bradford Cox of 2007’s great blog hype Deerhunter, whose swirling debut, Cryptograms, and bleak addendum the Fluorescent Grey EP actually lived up to all the critical chatter; Cox is a freak of the internet, a denizen of the digital underground whose own blog posts tend toward the NSFW; he strikes a rather shocking profile, due to the wasting effects of Marfan syndrome. What you might not know: Atlas Sound’s debut, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, is an enveloping lo-fi ambient punk dream, a pharmaceutical drift full of layered sound and delayed vocals that double back on themselves as wordless drones; live, Atlas Sound has expanded to include White Rainbow’s Adam Forkner (formerly of overly slept-on fantasy-epic shoegazers Yume Bitsu and dub dabblers VVRRSSNN) among other musicians. White Rainbow open, along with fellow Portland Kranksters Valet and Dormant. ERIC GRANDY

Lifesavas, One Struggle
(Nectar) Many Americans don’t know that they know Portland’s foremost hiphop crew Lifesavas. Many Americans know the music for the GMC commercial that has a massive pickup truck skipping from building top to building top and ripping down skyscrapers, but they don’t know that the music is taken from a smooth Lifesavas track called “Gutterfly” from their 2007 album of the same name, released by Quannum Projects (DJ Shadow, Blackalicious). The album exploits the themes and moods of blaxploitation films, but Lifesavas are far from the gaudy glamour of pimps and hustlers and much closer to the seriousness of old-time missionaries. Their mission in this fallen world is to save and spread the soul of hiphop. CHARLES MUDEDE

_{Arthur & Yu photo by Greg Lutze}

And did I mention there’s also the Young Ones showcase/Real Change benefit with Arthur & Yu and Dyme Def? Because that’s happening to, and it’s going to be great.