Local Album & Live Reviews

[April 19th, 2006]

^Blotter

REPP ON KOZELEK'S ROSTER, SOLOMON ON MFNW'S

Hush Records heroine Corrina Repp will be exploring uncharted waters when she releases her new album on Mark Kozelek 's (Red House Painters , Sun Kil Moon ) independent label, Caldo Verde . Repp's album will be the label's second release, following Sun Kil Moon's Tiny Cities (an album of Modest Mouse covers). Repp originally had been in talks to release the album on Sub Pop but grew impatient after discovering the Seattle label wouldn't be able to release the album, which has been in the can for almost a year, until 2007. Currently, the album, titled The Absent and the Distant, is scheduled for a Sept. 19 release. >> MusicfestNW , the annual music orgy sponsored by this here paper, recently announced the hiring of a new executive director to replace the outgoing director, Joe Lesher . The choice is Trevor Solomon , a familiar face to anybody in the local music scene. While working at Thrasher Presents and running Sweet T Management, Solomon has met almost everyone in town, and has tried to show them all his Hüsker Dü tattoo . Solomon has a long history with the annual event that will take place Sept. 7-9 in clubs across Portland. So, if you want to play the fest, Solomon's the guy you've got to suck up to. For more info on the festival, visit www.musicfestnw.com.

Sate our thirst for Portland music news. Email localcut@wweek.com.

^Monica Nelson Friday, April 21

The Obituaries' former lead lady commutes 3,000 miles for you.

[PUNK] A long-time favorite of vinyl collectors and Northwest punk nostalgia geeks, the Obituaries aren't quite of the reknown that would necessitate a reunion tour. But the band's notoriously dramatic vocalist, Monica Nelson, is back in town. Instead of rehashing 20-year-old releases from a band more revered for its wild shows than its recordings, she is writing new music and pairing up with the Neins' Dan Hawthorne to treat Portland to her bluesy, intelligent and tough vocal delivery. WW recently got her on the phone to talk about her return to the Rose City. JASON SIMMS.

WW: What have you been up to and what brought you back?

Monica Nelson: I've been in New York since 1990, and I've been in several bands there and they all lasted about two or three years. Last year [photographer and friend] David Ackerman wanted to hear me sing in Portland, so he thought I ought to meet Dan Hawthorne and get together for an acoustic show. We spent a few weeks practicing and played a show, and later that night Dan suggested I play with the Neins because they had a show that night. It went so well, and I got along so well with them, that when I went to Dan's house for a few goodbye beers, we ended up writing songs. So I'm going to be back in the Northwest a lot now. The reason I'm not moving back is because I spawned in New York and the daddy lives there.

Why commute so far?

Dan is the musician I've been looking for my whole life, and I'm not kidding. He has all of the qualities that I've always wanted in one musician but I've never been able to find. He has stamina—to play as fast as I want to play—a healthy amount of ambition and also...well...he's not mean to me.

So you're joining the Neins? Or is this a new band?

The Neins are still together—they're not breaking up or anything—but a couple of us are going to form a new band called Generation. At these shows that are coming up, there are going to be a few Obituaries songs and the rest of it is going to be things that I've written or co-written in New York.

Looking back, how do you feel about the Obituaries now?

It's like a high-school sweetheart. I'm really proud of those songs and what we did. It might have been a really good career move for me to die in 1990; the Monica Nelson name would be fabulously well-known.

The Neins feat. Monica Nelson play with the Mothballs, the Bug Nasties and the Luck at the Towne Lounge. 9:30 pm. $3. 21+.

^THREESOME - Hot Portland Singles ONLY

The Shaky Hands, "Summer's Life"

At first, the bouncy acoustic guitar of the Shaky Hands' "Summer's Life," coupled with lyrics about swimmin' holes, makes you think this jangly folk-pop tune is simply about good livin'. But despite the breezy brushed drums and lackadaisical vocals, a softly squeezed accordion hints at deeper melancholy. A closer listen reveals a song about making mistakes and growing up: "I guess I'm paying for what I've done...I loved it then/ And I wonder what happened." Still, the song's constant, hammering guitar part makes for damn fine skipping music. AMY MCCULLOUGH.

Crosstide, "Capable" from Life as a Spectator

The insistent, thumping kick drum and trotting bassline that start out this track are irresistible, even for someone who, like me, is generally opposed to Crosstide's radio-ready pop. Usually Brett Vogel's flawless over-dubbed vocal, singing "It seems I only see you from the bottom up," would identify "Capable" as a tract of pure pop sentimentality and disqualify it from being worthy of a complete listen. But that backbeat demands attention and reveals a song with more musical and lyrical depth. Along the way there is an infectious guitar run, filling in the gaps of that beat, and a second verse that finds Vogel singing, "All of the pills I take are outward signs of inward grey/ This is my strange, bizarre communion." Wait a second, this isn't a love song. MARK BAUMGARTEN.

Tragedy, "Call to Arms" from Vengeance

Without even a hint of doubt, I can say that Tragedy has the fullest, toughest, most powerful sound I have ever heard. Ever. Anywhere. Period. The drumrolls in the intro to "Call to Arms" are sternum-rattling, and the mid-range guitar leads over the perfectly tight hardcore punk background are like strikes of lightning in a thunderstorm. But the dueling low-octave screaming vocals are what do it. Decipher the lyrics, "No truce, no mercy, no surrender, no rest, no more, this is war," and then tell me that the punkocalypse hasn't arrived. This song is like Maiden's "The Trooper" times 1 million. It makes the nu-metal sound like Raffi. JASON SIMMS.

^The Minders April 14 at the Wonder Ballroom

After 10 years, the Minders keep the rock with the people. And more power to them.

[jangle-pop] "It's just nice to finally see a blue-collar indie band." This comment, voice by a Minders virgin ("Who's this? The Benders? The Finders?") during the band's opening set for Quasi, couldn't be more perfect. He had no idea that the members of the Minders, after a birth in the massively important Elephant Six collective (Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal) and a decade of toil on the pop hook, are still trapped in service-industry sweat, paying the bills from behind the bar. But they don't sound angry. Rather, the Minders represent that pleasant sort of working artist, embodying in their music the carefree workdays where you clock out, forget about the job and write the soundtracks to early-evening barbecues filled with drunken croquet, shit-talking and a cooler of High Life.

Friday's set was a pop manifesto, fun and bouncy music by creed, with Martyn Leaper snagging the weak with his guitar and four-note vocal cascades, and his wife, Rebecca Cole, yanking them aboard with her keys. The hooks are short and sweet, and the lyrics, when they seem to matter at all, are more clever "me and you"-oriented poetics than anything weighty. And everything is, of course, repeated until it's burned through the thickest skull in the room, notably on one of the many new songs the band played, possibly titled "3 5 7," which twisted a two-measure melody in god knows how many ways over the course of 10 minutes. You could see the "let's try it this way" in Leaper's cross-stage grins at Cole.

Yet, the Wonder Ballroom's crowd seemed a bit more in tune with Bolshevik lockstep than American blue-collar bounce, standing so still it was almost creepy. I'll let 'em off on the not singing-along thing just because most of the material was from a forthcoming record, but otherwise, c'mon, go back to the office. This band's for the folks. MICHAEL BYRNE.