The Domestics Album Drops

Portland duo The Domestics released their hotly anticipated first album this week on Tender Loving Empire. The eponymous, 10-song debut showcases the band’s sweet-sounding chronicles of heartache and general relationship woes. Michael Finn and Leo London only came together musically two years ago, but already they’ve made a big impact on the local music scene. The new album will likely cement that reputation. Buy it here. 

 Playwrights Festival Afoot 

Portland’s playwrights festival JAW kicks off today with free staged readings and a chance to see new plays while they’re still in development, not to mention rub shoulders with up-and-coming playwrights and some clowns and cabaret thrown in for good measure. This year’s four featured plays—about a town of dashed dreams, a family’s downward spiral in Civil Rights era Misissippi, the “cruel demise of the .0001 percent” and a cat—will be shown over the course of the three-day festival, at the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

It All Starts With Beer

What happen when a dozen craft brewers from The Netherlands travel to the Oregon Brewers Festival to find out how we’ve come so far in craft beer terms? It All Starts With Beer is what, a Dutch craft beer documentary being screened at the Mission Theater next Monday, July 27. The movie, a joint project between Rick Nelson with the Netherlands’ Oedipus Brewing and film director Boris Booij, will be followed by a panel discussion with Art Larrance, founder of the Oregon Brewers Festival, and several of the Dutch brewers featured in the movie.

Kickstarter Roundup

Two very different Portland arts projects with very different goals have launched Kickstarter campaigns this week. A new documentary “looking at the rapid gentrification in Portland’s traditional black neighborhoods” launched its Kickstarter on Wednesday, July 22 with a $10,000 goal. “Priced Out: 15 Years of Gentrification in Portland, Oregon” is a sequel to the 2002 documentary “NorthEast Passage: The Inner City and the American Dream.” It deals with the rise of the North/Northeast Portland neighborhoods, focusing on the life of one black resident, Nikki Williams, who finds herself forced to leave. 

Meanwhile, local country band the Lonesome Billies is looking for less than $2,000 more to meet their goal of $8,000, with less than a week to go. The money is to go towards covering the costs of producing the band’s new album “It’s Good to be Lonesome”. Rewards include the opportunity to pick the topic for a new Lonesome Billies song, which they’ll write and record for you personally.