Sunday October 5

Gus Englehorn

If Gus Englehorn didn't exist, one of his songs would have to invent him.

A former pro snowboarder reborn as a nomadic psych-pop prophet, Englehorn has lived a rollercoaster life that reads like one of the fantastical fables that fill his songbook.

Back in January 2020, right at the dawn of the pandemic, Englehorn released his first album, Death & Transfiguration, whose opening jangle-punk sermon, "My Own Paradise," proved to be a timely mission statement for a moment when we were all forced to retreat into our own private sanctuaries for months that felt like years. But even as life has since opened up again, Englehorn is still firmly situated in a world of his own madcap design. While his journey on this terrestrial plane has taken him from his native Alaska to Utah to Quebec to Portland to his current home (for the next five minutes at least) in Hawaii, Englehorn is ultimately a citizen of Planet Gus, an uncanny universe created through a big-bang collision between serene beauty and apocalyptic chaos, populated by folkloric heroes, creepy characters, and oversized insects alike.

With each successive record, Englehorn's world-building process has become more elaborate and ambitious. Where 2022's Dungeon Master walked the tightrope between DIY discord and prog-scaled storytelling, his third album, The Hornbook, magically transmutes the entire history of 20th-century rock 'n' roll—'50s golden oldies, '60s garage spunk, '70s glam flamboyance, '80s indie transgression, '90s lo-fi weirdness—into an alien transmission from the future.

Doors open at 8pm
Music 8:30pm
19+