LOCAL NEWS & REVEIWS

[February 22nd, 2006]

^Blotter

YOUR SOURCE FOR IMPORTANT STUFF.

The schedule for Austin's March music (industry) festival South by Southwest is being solidified, and some more Portland groups have managed to grab a spot. In addition to the names we announced earlier (see Blotter, WW, Jan. 18, 2005), the fest will include performances by Ethan Rose , Super XX Man , Stars of Track and Field , the Galactic Heroes and Ever We Fall . Blitzen Trapper will also be in town playing the Friday-night party for Fader magazine. While still not technically on the schedule, the performance still counts. After all, it doesn't matter if your ass is in the bathtub or the fireplace, you're still part of the orgy. >> Spin.com , the online offshoot of the national magazine, is onto Portland's twee kings, having named Parks & Recreation its band of the day for Thursday, Feb. 16. >> Seantos , he of the handlebar mustache, Starantula and inexplicable sex appeal, has been hired as the new general manager of Sabala's at Mount Tabor , which could spell change for the Southeast punk and leather club. >> Lucky Madison 's Ryan Feigh reports that Brett Whitman of the Snuggle Ups has decided not to move to Philadelphia, a possibility that was reported in Blotter a few weeks ago. Hopefully this means the spring will be filled with sweaty boy-led dance parties that will go on and on and on and on.

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^Miraflores Saturday, Feb. 25

This trio's pop succeeds and suffers from its other-townliness.

[POP] Miraflores frontman Jonathan Newsome sings like a wider-mouthed, American Morrissey, and his band weaves a jangly nest of mom-safe layered pop all around him. "I likes what I likes," he sings on the band's first full-length album, Nobody Knows, "Country music in mono and girls on bikes." For a Portland band, the lyrics seem strikingly un-Portland. Probably because the group moved here from Savannah, Ga., in 2003.

Aside from being un-Portland, Nobody Knows is frustratingly uneven. Even within the six-minute opener, "New Shoes," Newsome's voice bounces between sounding emotive and totally unengaged, the band between flat and dynamic. We aren't pulled into the song until the four-minute mark, when a climbing, distorted guitar pushes the group out of complacency and into an epic, hypnotizing finale worthy of a Thom Yorke head-wobble.

Of course, it takes a lot of energy to go from Marcy Playground to Radiohead in six minutes, and Miraflores can't sustain the effort, coming back down to earth just as quickly as it ascended. "Louanne," which the band's press materials call the "standout radio track," is undeniably catchy but about as deep as a VH1 special. "I'm so jealous of your friends/ And I'm so jealous of your trends," Newsome sings. Then he says "karate chop" for no reason at all—which is pretty great, actually.

Newsome is a very clever songwriter who shines on tracks like "Take It Back," where he dishes out charmingly heart-on-sleeve, omnipotent relationship advice. The band puts forth several show-stoppers as well, like "Sons and Daughters," an eight-minute track that stays compelling throughout, thanks to creative arrangements and varied instrumentation. If the group could only crystallize that song's last stand, with Newsome singing, "Snake in the baby's crib/ Smoke in the neighbor's yard" over sparse guitar shards and minimalist "doo-doo" backup vocals, Miraflores could carve out something really special for itself.

Being un-Portland isn't a bad thing, and Miraflores plays well-written, bright pop music that is refreshingly unpretentious. The disappointing thing about Nobody Knows is that the band seems tethered to the idea of making a record that balances their own, terribly alluring uniqueness with someone else's idea of what a great pop record should be. That's an area where getting a little Portland might just go a long way. CASEY JARMAN.

Miraflores plays at Mississippi Studios. 10 pm. $5. 21+.

^M. ward

M. Ward wants you to like him, but he wants you to like John Fahey more.

[FOLK] You might not know Portland's neo-folk guitar virtuoso M. Ward, but he doesn't really care. You've probably seen him—looks kinda like a young Cat Stevens if he were modeling for a mid-'90s L.L. Bean catalog—playing alongside some of the best acts to visit the Northwest in the past year: My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes, and Iron & Wine, just to name a few. But M. Ward (Matt to his mama) wants you to know someone else: John Fahey. He wants you to know this eccentric acoustic innovator so much that he helped Vanguard Records' Stephen Brower put together I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey (released Feb. 14), featuring Sufjan Stevens, Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, Devendra Banhart and Ward himself. WW caught up with Ward to talk about Fahey's inspiration, playing really hard songs on the guitar, and strippers.

AMY MCCULLOUGH.

WW: How did you originally get to be a fan of Fahey's?

M. Ward: My friend gave me [The Yellow Princess] when I turned 21. I was excited about hearing somebody with such a focused, singular vision. It just so happens that the record was amazing.

How much time and effort do you really have to put into learning one of his songs?

I think it's a labor of love to learn anybody else's song, but especially these songs because they're so complicated. I mean, that's my opinion of playing the instrument and having this weird career. I think to be able to be a student and be an active part of whatever career you have is a good sign that you're going to be in that career for a while, if you're still curious about learning.

What about the other artists? How hard was it for them?

It's just been a blast to take time out of your day to learn these songs, because that's only going to help you as a guitar player in the end. Everybody got money to learn these songs, but I'd like to think that everybody learned these songs for their own education.

What were your intentions behind the tribute?

I hope the record redirects people toward what they really should be listening to. That's the ultimate hope.

Here's a sign of the increase in popularity for neo-folk: I recently saw a girl at Magic Garden strip to "Helicopter" [from Ward's 2003 album Transfiguration of Vincent].

Oh, no.

You sound like you're almost a little put off by it.

Um, boy, I...

Is that surprising to you?

Stories just get stranger as you get older, and people are listening to your music in the last place you would ever expect or sometimes hope. So I try not to think about it too much.

^Viva Voce Feb 17 at Holocene

Lovers lead the way: Viva Voce started the duo-rockin' off right at the Reading Frenzy benefit.

[PSYCH-POP] "She's playing a double-neck guitar," I hear a guy say to his friend as we stand eight people deep at a packed Holocene bar Friday night. "That's not cool." The front room's projected image of husband-and-wife psych-pop duo Viva Voce confirms it: The opener is "Alive With Pleasure," and Anita Robinson is indeed playing a Jimmy Page-esque double-neck guitar.

I take my bourbon and muscle my way through the side door—which is no easy task—to find myself right in front of Anita as she sings "With a quick show of hands/ Let's see who understands" in her captivating lullaby voice on "Daylight." The audio-sex then continues perfectly into the irresistibly seductive "High Highs."

The crowd cheers enthusiastically, but practically no one is getting their groove on, which is hard to believe considering the addictive guitar line, sweeping synths and flowing melody of the next song, "Wrecking Ball," which recently found regular rotation on a national car commercial. Regardless, the chemistry between Anita and Kevin Robinson is just priceless. You can't help but be charmed watching them smile at each other before changes or seeing Kevin nod at Anita before she tears into a guitar solo—as if he's saying, "You can do it."

There are no signs of the new material the band has been recording for its Barsuk Records release later this year, but so far it's as if Viva Voce let me write the set list for them. Then, Kevin drops his sticks, picks up an acoustic guitar and commences the momentous build of "The Lucky Ones" by strumming and kicking the bass drum at the same time. His "Bah, bap, ba-dah-dahs" behind Anita's heartbreaking chorus are perfect; then she rips into a spellbinding, ridiculous guitar solo. So when Kevin sings on "Red D-Lish," "It's nothing you do/ That makes me love you," I can't help but think: Are you sure it's not your wife's wicked-bad guitar playing or heavenly voice?

They finish things off with "Lesson No. 1," and Kevin's delivery of the words, "Keep your head up/ Things are all right" sounds like he really fucking means it. And he should, because I'm inclined to agree with negative bar-guy's friend earlier in the night: "No," he said in response to the double-neck guitar comment, "That is cool." AMY MCCULLOUGH.

^It's Importland To Me...

Holocene Music's breeding ground spawns both the rad and the bad.

It's Importland To Me... Various artists (Holocene Music)

[RE-PDX] Holocene Music tags its first release, It's Importland to Me to Be One Step Further Than One Step Beyond, as "freeform post-everything music." That's interesting, but I prefer to call the all-local remix compilation from the Southeast club an experiment in cross-breeding.

Hardly a dis, considering that cross-breeding has given the world adorable wonders as my roommate's labradoodle. As a whole, Holocene's compilation is massively successful, allowing Portland's top electronic artists to remix songs from some of Portland's best bands. But, as with all mixing, there is the risk of aesthetic failure, the hairless huskies, the intergenre flailing.

The first six cuts are true genre collisions with delightful results, save for the Emergency Ghost remix of Y.A.C.H.T. (eight-bit midtempo IDM remixed into melodic medtempo IDM). Standing tall among them is the folk-rock of Blitzen Trapper's "Whiskey Kisser" remixed by Kittenz into dancey electropunk sin. Equally as startling is newcomer Dizzy Starhouse's take on Point Juncture, WA's bit of indie-sweetness, "The Siesta Movement." The vibraphone-centered arrangement feels like it's been grabbed at either end and stretched: The vibe notes are spaced into near disconnection, and the backing instrumentation is fully electrified into near-ambience highlighting Amanda Spring's tremendously odd, Björk-like vocals.

The later portion of the disc shows considerably more experimental balls: World's chaotic remix of Thanksgiving's "Get Married" is an expected success. But Hutch Harris of the Thermals did nothing to deserve Ovian's hideous vocal-track cut-and-paste. And Chuck Westmoreland of the Kingdom just sounds wrong placed above Copy's electro beats and pure synth melody. And there's a lot in between, most of it pretty damn cool but unsurprising: DJ Tant doing Lucky Madison homey Alan Singley's "On Leaving," Portland General Electro doing the Snuggle Ups to a remarkably un-irritating result and Splendid remixing Point Line Plane, among a whole lot of other pleasantly unexpected offspring. MICHAEL BYRNE.

Many of the artists featured on It's Importland to Me... will be performing Thursday, Feb. 23, at Holocene. 8:30 pm. $8. 21+.