Local Album & Live Reviews

[May 10th, 2006]

^Blotter

PDX POP SOON! PLUS: SHEEHY, PORKY'S & OLYMPIAN

The PDX Pop Now! local all-ages music festival is just months away, and organizers are trying to make it easier for the public to vote for the bands it wants to see take the stage at Loveland, July 28-30. To that end, organizers, who volunteer their time for the somewhat-democratic festival, have revamped the fest's website to include a list of local artists to choose from, along with samples of their music. Go to www.pdxpopnow.com and vote so you can complain when they announce the lineup. >> Matt Sheehy has performed his percussive brand of acoustic guitar around Portland for years, sometimes as part of Gravity and Henry . He expands his range exponentially this month, touring Italy as the opening act for similarly styled young sensation Kaki King . Sheehy releases a single this month in advance of his album Diplomatics, due later this year. >> Porky's Pub has cancelled all its scheduled shows due to ownership changes. The new owners say they hope to get shows up and running soon, but no definite word on when. >> Plans are in the works for a new music venue that will be owned by and located right next to Kelly's Olympian . The new club is unnamed and still in the works, say workers at Kelly's Olympian, but will hopefully be completed in the near future.

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

^Stuffing the Ballot Box?

Jason Simms tracks Riot Cop's journey from second place to sixth to footnote.

In an effort to make a more representative Best New Bands poll this year, WW sent ballots out to people in Portland's DIY community who put on house shows, publish zines (like Defector) or run small vinyl labels (like Blindspot Records). A lot of these people were reluctant to vote for fear of endangering their street cred by interacting with the established media, but Riot Cop, which is probably the most political band in town, encouraged anyone from their social strata involved with local music to request a ballot for the poll—something we encouraged all our voters to do.

With their strong reputation for activism as well as music, I wasn't too surprised to see the band at No. 6 when I got the original breakdown of the Best New Band Top 10. The band has been around since 1999, but it did play a couple of large events at Reed College in the past year that exposed it to a new audience. The second annual Speed at Reed festival saw Riot Cop on a bill with hardcore legends Tragedy, Hellshock and Japanese glam punkers Gouka, among others.

That event not only gained Riot Cop a larger following, it also gained the event's organizer, Justin Wilson, a vote in the poll. But it wasn't until I wrote the initial draft of this story, expressing excitement about the presence of a very DIY-oriented and socially conscious punk group in the Top 10, that Music Editor Mark Baumgarten (who tabulated the votes) noticed something funny. It turned out that Wilson, who plays in Riot Cop, gave his top vote to his own band. The Best New Band ballot letter, sent out to more than 200 potential voters last month, explicitly stated, "You can vote for any band you like, as long as it is not a band you play in." Wilson's vote was stricken, and Riot Cop slid out of the Top 10.

This alone doesn't seem too fishy—Wilson could easily have misunderstood the rules. But Riot Cop's campaign strategy apparently went a step further, resulting in people forgoing a ballot request and sending in ballots unsolicited, giving no indication of who was casting a vote or if that person held a position in the music community we felt would make them an authority. These votes were discounted after emails asking for an explanation weren't answered. But if those votes had been counted, Riot Cop would have been No. 2, with 26.5 points.

Now, I'm not saying Riot Cop tried to fix the poll, but if they were trying to fuck with us, that's pretty rad. The only complaint I would level against the band's music is that sometimes its political stances get a little predictable and boring. A prank like this makes up for all of that. Maybe your intentions were honest all along, Riot Cop, but I'm going to go on assuming they weren't, because I like you better that way.

—JASON SIMMS

^Where's the Hip-Hop?

Casey Jarman tears the Top 10 list and takes some blame.

In the past three years, only three hip-hop acts (Lifesavas, Siren's Echo and DJ Beyonda) have been included on WW's annual Best New Band Top 10 list. After some serious brain-busting mathematics, I realized that that's a 10 percent representation, genre-wise, for rap music. This is a gross under-representation, especially this year, when, despite breakout years for a lot of local crews and emcees, only DJ Beyonda, who is more dancey than a hip-hop DJ, is holding the hip-hop banner.

Ohmega Watts and his group, Lightheaded, both had huge years. Watts' debut album, The Find, was one of the biggest national splashes to come out of Portland in 2005, and deservedly so: It's as funky as it is deep. Iame's debut, Noise Complaints‚ is a similarly ambitious, lovingly crafted artistic statement. Watts tallied 14 points in the poll, putting him in a three-way tie for 14th, and Iame didn't even score. So what happened?

The lack of hip-hop artists in this year's admittedly flawed Best New Band results are largely due to structural problems in the polling process. The name "Best New Band," in itself, is problematic, though ballots were clear about who was eligible: "any music-making entity, be it a band, a solo performer, emcee or a DJ." The major flaw in this year's polling, however, is that we at WW haven't made enough of an attempt to get ballots to players in the local hip-hop community. For that, the blame rests on my shoulders. It's my beat; it's my fault.

Of course, the same complaints can be lodged at WW by boosters of other non-rock genres, as evidenced by reactions from performers in the electronic music community to Copy's runaway victory this year ("about fucking time," was the general sentiment). The only way to fix these representational problems is to gather a wider spectrum of voters for next year's poll. So this is a call to Portland's bookers, club-owners, label representatives, bartenders, security workers, sound engineers, DJs and bloggers across genre lines. Hit us up. The email address is localcut@wweek.com.

Despite these oversights, there isn't a lot to be bitter about when looking to the future of Portland hip-hop. This year promises releases from Siren's Echo, Lifesavas and Cool Nutz, among others. I'm also excited to see how Sleep follows up his incredible Christopher album, and to see what kind of moves Ill Waters Project, probably the group to look out for, makes in '06. This time next year, the Best New Band list might just finally represent.

—CASEY JARMAN

^What's with the weird bands?

Top 10 list in hand, Michael Byrne declares 2006 the year of the oddball.

Given the handicaps, White Rainbow's No. 9 spot on this year's Best New Band list is a goddamn scene-shattering event. Adam Forkner's one-man project is utterly formless, can induce seizures, and demands the sort of extended attention span that pop culture weeded out of the gene pool a long time ago. It is—at turns—noise, IDM, psychedelia, freak(ed) folk, ambient, space-rock and innumerable weird nameless cracks in between. For an idea of the amorphous chaos/panic/urgency of White Rainbow, consider that his second release, since he began recording as White Rainbow last year, was a five-disc box set. I like to think that Portland is the only city in the country astute enough for something like this to make the list. I'm so proud, I could cry.

White Rainbow is an agent of a larger family of experimental musicians in Portland that generally goes unrecognized. Much of it stems from the roots of Jackie-O Motherfucker, whose alumni have taken that collective's creed of pure musical freedom into their own projects, including World, Valet, Plants and (the hardly new) Nudge. Those local roots are also intertwined with the likes of recent exports Daniel Menche and D. Yellow Swans in projects like Argumentix, Dead/Bird and Ghosting.

This is music that isn't meant to be cultivated. If "Indie Town USA" were a band garden (and it is), then these would be the weeds: lively shoots sprouted from seeds blown in, rather than planted, and content to remain ignored. But that's not at all true anymore, as this year's poll shows. Portland couldn't have voted for a better hybrid of all of the above than White Rainbow.

God knows how many rows of perfectly formed, traditional, indie-rock bands rose from the soil in the past year. All of them were passed over for this list. All of the Top 10 are deviants in some way: the solitary songwriter Tractor Operator, the folk orchestra Please Step Out of the Vehicle, and Beyonda, the three-year-old poll's first ever DJ. Alan Singley and Pants Machine is the closest thing to "normal" on the list, and that's like calling an extra toe normal. Next year, I expect nothing less than an equal representation of black metal, free jazz, gangsta rap, drum circles (or not), "performance violence," and lots and lots of unnamed cracks between. Excuse me while I go wipe my eyes.

—MICHAEL BYRNE

^Isn't this "new" band old?

Amy McCullough explains how a moldy oldy stepped into the limelight.

The concept of "new" has always been a hard one when it comes to music. How new is a new band that sounds just like Pavement, really? Is anything new when artists are surely influenced by what's preceded them? Aren't a lot of us too cool to admit that we don't already know every hot "new" band, anyway? Sure we are. So, how did Norfolk & Western—an entity that has existed in some form for going on a decade—make it to No. 5 on WW's Best New Band list?

As voter Mike King, a poster artist for Crash America, said to justify placing N&W as his numero uno: "Yeah, I know, not even close to new, but they just keep [getting] better all the time, and I love them, so sue me." I love N&W, too, but they didn't appear on my ballot because, yes, I thought they were too "old." The spawn of singer/guitarist Adam Selzer and drummer/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Rachel Blumberg, N&W started out as an outlet for Selzer's songwriting in 1998 (with fellow Portlander M. Ward), and, like it or not, that spells O-L-D.

But—due to the ridiculously talented and supportive indie-pop community in this town—bands are constantly swapping members, allowing them to recreate themselves, much as N&W did with its April release, A Gilded Age, a more boisterous, noise-infused effort than its soft-and-pretty earlier material. Another part of N&W's pool of gifted musicians is Selzer's recording studio, Type Foundry, where he recruits a lot of N&W's talent. With so much inter- and intra-band action, it's no wonder more people are hearing about acts like N&W, who could've easily lingered in obscurity for who knows how many more years.

You've also gotta give props to local bookers, like the Doug Fir's Alicia Rose, for booking local acts as openers for nationally touring acts: Just this month the Fir has Bright Red Paper opening for Cloud Cult and John Weinland opening for Rainer Maria. Then, of course, there's the effect of MySpace, blogging and print media—yes, like WW—that are all giving local music more coverage and exposure than ever.

Then there's the Decemberists factor. Until last year, Blumberg beat the skins for Portland's latest "it" band, the Decemberists. She left to focus on N&W with longtime b-friend Selzer. This allowed the two of them to focus on recording (the band will release a full-length this October) and touring, which also raised their profile. I'm sure that some folks are navigating to N&W's website just because of the Decemberists affiliation, but they're staying and listening and going to shows and buying records for another: This maturing Portland collective embodies pretty much everything that's cool about living and listening to music here. And when something this good just keeps getting better, you can't ignore it forever.

—AMY MCCULLOUGH