Original image of Zoe Amba and band by There Stands the Glass.
A genuine rock 'n' roll high school, Revolution Hall is a former Portland public school converted into an entertainment emporium. A Taylor Swift-themed dance party was the primary attraction at the complex on Thursday, September 4. I was bemused to find myself amid hundreds of cheerful women wearing spangled dresses.
Show Bar, a small room in Revolution Hall, attracted fifty substantially grungier and gloomier people who paid $20 apiece for a show featuring Zoh Amba and Bijoux Cone. Even though Amba’s Eyes Full is one of my favorite non-jazz and non-classical albums of 2026, I passed on a chance to catch Amba open for Courtney Barnett in Kansas City last month.
I began smiling ten seconds into an explosive hour-long performance by Amba’s trio and am still on a post-show high as I write these words two days later. Amba looked and acted like the young Rodney Crowell while the feral attack often sounded much like 1984-era Minutemen. As a bonus, Amba played a few minutes of free jazz skronk.
Cone lacked Amba’s reckless confidence. Splitting the difference between Anohni and Lou Reed, Cone’s solo outing was marred by frequent references to her phone. Still, the rousing karaoke version of Suicide’s “Surrender” closing Cone’s set provided an appropriate foretaste of Amba’s extremely un-Swiftian triumph.