Radiation City is a Portland four-piece influenced by 60s bossa nova and girl group pop (with bite). Their debut album, The Hands That Take You, is coming out on Tender Loving Empire (Typhoon, Loch Lomond) on September 27.

Band members Cameron Spies and Lizzy Ellison came together through a series of creative collaborations, among them landscaping, cooking and photography. Being on the label side of things and getting sent a ton of music, they decided to try their hand at making their own. After only a few performances they started gaining attention as ‘one of Portland’s most polished and promising young acts’ (Willamette Week).

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I’m reading the new John Lennon biography by Beatles historian, Philip Norman, a fascinating and deeply revealing insight into the strife and times of one of music’s truly significant icons. Wrapped up amongst the first person anecdotes, you get a real sense of this complex and somewhat traumatic genius who could have just as easily ended up languishing in a prison cell, such was the venom that often seeped from his angry young self. Of course, history has a habit of correcting itself, and Lennon went onto become part myth, part melodrama, full serving singer-songwriter for the ages. From all the many hours of archival Beatles footage, I love this clip in particular, which shows Lennon in fine health and, presumably, good spirits, while the other Beatles crack insidery jokes with raised eyebrows and funny jigs.