Hot Quirky Freaks

At the Student Terrace Stage: Arising from Portland's fertile weird-pop gene pool, Au (pronounce it "ay you") conceive songs that alternate between rivetingly chaotic and beautifully elegant and minimalist. Their feral urgency and dramatic shifts in mood recall Animal Collective, and Au share with freak folk's posterboys a striving for mass "hallelujah"s through a sort of fallen-angel gospel music. Seattle guitarist/vocalist PWRFL Power (Kazutaka Nomura) rocks a faux-naif, troubadour steez, creating spindly, cutely askew songs for coffeehouses that spike their wares with magic-mushroom juice. He doesn't write love songs; he pens like ditties. And with their crooked, cracked, tormented pop, Portland's Parenthetical Girls are forever destined to open for Xiu Xiu, a situation with which they seem totally cool.
Mon., May 26, 7:30 p.m., 2008