Typhoon and Mimicking Birds
Often performing with upwards of a dozen people onstage, Portland, Oregon indie rockers Typhoon can sometimes come on like an Oingo Boingo revival populated by members of Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend. They’ve released three full-lengths and a couple of EPs since forming in 2005, as well as a 2015 live album, but it’s their rollicking stage shows that have earned them wall-to-wall opening slots for supportive headliners like the Decemberists, the Shins, and Portugal. The Man. Their tunes build on frequently bleak themes with an indie-pop sheen made all the more bombastic by live violins, horns, vibes, xylophones, and even the occasional keytar.
Earlier this year, frontman Kyle Morton (whose lyrics about mortality and fragility are said to be inspired by childhood bouts with lyme disease) released a solo album, prompting many to speculate that the band might be on the verge of splitting. However, they just announced their fourth full-length, Offerings, due to drop shortly before the band takes the Music Box stage on February 10. According to Morton on the band’s website, the character-based concept album about amnesia is “a seventy-minute exploration of memory and sacrifice in multiple movements…it’s a record from the perspective of a mind losing its memory at precisely the same time the world is willfully forgetting its history.” The first movement, “Floodplains,” is streaming free, with a video backdrop created by surrealist designer and videographer Nevan Doyle. The bill includes Mimicking Birds and Matt Dorrien.