Local News & Reviews

[September 27th, 2006]

^Alela Diane the Pirate's Gospel (Holocene Music)

A 22-year-old folkie lends timeless tales to listeners on her stunning debut.

[FOLK] In the 11 songs of Alela Diane's debut album, The Pirate's Gospel, there is barely a reference—musically or otherwise—to the past decade. Or the one before that. Or before that, for that matter. She's written the sort of timeless, abstract songs that are endangered or extinct outside of folk music, and are still rare within it. This isn't to say that there's anything like oblivion on this record. Is there a war going on? Of course, but there's always a war going on. The one she writes of in "The Rifle" could just as well be taking place in Ho Chi Minh City, Baghdad or Gettysburg. All we know of are "heavy boots, heavy big black boots" and the fear of a child trapped in the middle of it all. Is there heartbreak and loss? Certainly. On her song "Can You Blame the Sky?" she asks, "Can you blame the sky/ When a momma leaves her babies behind?" Diane has an amazing gift: The ability to fill anyone's shoes but her own, hanging her sparse forest folk songs on beautiful and honest little snippets of a world based on shared sense and feeling.

This sense of communal expression carries throughout the music as well. Her voice—a boundless throat tempered by an obvious humility and creeping tendrils of vocal smoke—channels (in the immediate) hipster ironists CocoRosie, but if there's any justice will fall closer to Jolie Holland or Billie Holiday as a cultural imprint. The music is as bare and simple as that of either artist, rarely accompanied or propped with flourishes; this stays far, far away from the dozens of microgenres of folk birthed in the past decade or so (free, freak, psych and on down the growing list). The finest exception to the voice/guitar formula, "Pieces of String," is emboldened by the cute and touching accompaniment of a few little kids. Overall, the album is filled with an extremely self-aware traditionalism that, in the hands of such a talented songwriter with a keen sense of timelessness, is, at least, refreshing. It's amazing this is a debut album from a 22-year-old songwriter. But, again, for Ms. Diane, youth and time are meaningless things. In what may be a rare moment of wearing her own shoes, she opens wide the record with the line "punish the youth from my eyes." Not too fast, though. Please.

—MICHAEL BYRNE

Alela Diane plays with Mariee Sioux, Kele Goodwin and DJ Yeti, Tuesday, Oct. 3, at Holocene. 9 pm. $6. 21+.

^Small Sails Wednesday, Sept. 27

This Portland quartet not only combines the audio and the visual, they make the two inseparable.

[A/V CLUB] It may take a much larger sail for the audiovisual quartet Small Sails to reach goals that, at this moment, are just beyond their jagged blue horizon line. Tour any record store and it's clear we're still waiting for the System of Creative Consumption—the messy network that allows us to "own" the artwork of others—to truly allow the "multi" into multimedia art. Yes, CDs are more and more often coming with "bonus" DVDs, but rarely are they tagged "essential." This would be the case for any Small Sails release: a total package, one where every pulsing beat is accompanied by its visual reflection, a gently pulsing image.

Someday—hopefully before the extinction of record shops—one bin will be christened the "A/V" section, but until then, Small Sails are bounded by their own artistic ideal, progressive as it may be. To hear the band tell it, their sweet and subtle compositions of ambient rock (yes, here we can allow the contradiction) are necessarily intertwined with the filmwork of band member Ryan Jeffery. The band's ideal, according to frontman Ethan Rose, is simple: "The continuing evolution of sound and image." It's an ideal that cuts straight into the evolving dialogue of performance: Does visual accompaniment dilute musical composition? Do the two become inseparable? Live, these questions don't need to be answered. Jeffery's improvised collageworks of everything from '50s beach scenes to skyscrapers to early-20th century street scenes are stunning works in de- and recomposed film. While you're experiencing Small Sails, there's no need (or opportunity for that matter) to create that mental wedge between the mediums. It's a stunning combination, on par with the recent A/V works by Rachel's and the Books.

Multimedia ideals aside, Small Sails have no reason to be discouraged. I'll recall the seminal Rachel's album Systems/Layers, one of the most beautiful pieces of music written this century. It was written as live accompaniment for a play of the same title. Likewise, the most recent Small Sails release, Hunter Gatherer, is gorgeous in the darkest of rooms. It's a move away from the band's previous, strictly ambient project, Adelaide, and toward more powerful melodic arrangements, crisp beats and head-swaying rhythms. The most important difference between the two projects, though, is the sweet, soothing vocal display from Ethan Rose (who was recently featured in The New York Times for his solo project). Small Sails won't find their A/V bin anytime soon, but, until then, their faux-ambient pastorals will occupy one of the most significant places in our city's electronic bins. And for those of us willing to leave the house, we'll have fourth member Ryan Jeffery and his dual projectors and reels of faded Americana as our secret.

—MICHAEL BYRNE

Small Sails play with Laura Gibson and the Sun Boat at Towne Lounge. 9:30 pm. Cover. 21+.

^Dirty Martini Friday, Sept. 29

Talking cocktails and carnivals with the songwriting triumvirate.

[SINGERS-SONGWRITERS] I arrive at McKinley's bungalow, staggering distance from the Space Room and other upper-Hawthorne watering holes, to find the three ladies of Dirty Martini perched on countertops, sipping cocktails, awaiting homemade pizza from the oven and giggling up a storm. As I'm handed a drink, the band members' lifestyle duties are spelled out: McKinley cooks and bakes (besides pizza, there are fresh peanut-butter cookies), Lara Michell mixes cocktails (no small task in a band named after one) and Stephanie Schneiderman DJs the stereo (after fruitlessly seeking a Jeff Buckley CD, she picks Liz Phair). The division of labor reflects the group mentality that's developed among these three formerly solo singer-songwriters in the three-and-a-half years of their collaboration.

Indeed, a different Dirty Martini greets Portland at the band's pair of concerts this weekend and on its new sophomore disc, Tea and Revenge: not the seated, songwriters-in-the-round format with which they began their collaboration, nor the tough pop-rock sound developed with former member Lea Krueger. Following Krueger's departure—to focus on solo work shortly after the release of the band's eponymous debut—the remaining three shifted their creative balance and forged ahead. Co-writing songs for the first time and toning down the sonic bombast that sometimes obscured their carefully blended voices, the women (joined by co-manager Ned Failing on drums, Michell's Stolen Sweets-mate Keith Brush on bass and the evocative keyboards of Todd Bayles) now boast a fully blended musical cocktail.

Co-producers John Askew and Dave Allen (the former Gang of Four bassist, who also co-manages the band with Failing) crafted the new album's sound after, says Michell, "Dave heard us rehearsing in the RV on tour" and decided to "tear down the arrangements so the vocals were the centerpiece of everything." McKinley says the unifying sonic concept then took the form of a Where's Waldo-like game called "Find the Carny": "There's always a moment that sounded really carnival, like the skinny guy with the tattoos that runs the Tilt-A-Whirl too long 'cause he's drunk—an element of dirty, chaotic danger." Michell sums up the not-too-pretty aesthetic: "Something had to be wrong in the right way."

—JEFF ROSENBERG

Dirty Martini performs with Amelia and Michael Jodell, Friday, Sept. 29 at the Bagdad Theater. 8:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages. The group also performs with Susie Blue, Saturday, Sept. 30, at the Mission Theater. 8:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.

^Please Step Out of the Vehicle, Sleeping Right and the Best in Homeopathic Magic (Lucky Madison)

Gettin high 'n' horn-y with Nintendo-lovin' PSOOTV's trip-pop debut.

[PSYCH-POP] It's tough to wrangle with Please Step Out of the Vehicle's Sleeping Right and the Best in Homeopathic Magic, which seems designed to befuddle right from its very name. Throw in PSOOTV frontman Travis Pants' back-to-nature lyrical approach and the most unlikely horn section in town, and one discovers that this album—and band—just don't fit.

On one level, Please Step Out of the Vehicle is a pop group. That sensibility shines through on fantastic pop tracks like "Pitch" and "We Will Go Everywhere (Part 2)," both of which bear more than a passing resemblance to Pavement tunes, replacing Stephen Malkmus' free-association wordplay with Pants' more linear, spiked-punch stream-of-consciousness approach. Pants takes us through an entire workless day of his life on "Pitch," where his biggest adventure is to "Find some stamps and walk down the block/ Go to drop these frequencies off in the night." The starry-eyed songwriter spends much of Homeopathic Magic focusing on the mundane, but he illuminates daily tasks like sleeping or taking the bus with his own sense of wonder, which can't help but rub off on the listener.

Intermittently (like acid flashbacks) throughout the album, Please Step Out of the Vehicle reveals itself as a jumbled, psychedelic, videogame-generation art project. "Jellyfish as Fluxus Directory," for example, is a surprisingly funky instrumental military march with actual NES synth sounds that winds up floating into dopesville, like Rambo showing up at the Eugene Saturday Market. These zanier moments, while cool in a Michael Byrne (WW/Local Cut's reviewer of experimental/noise/electronic music) type of way, almost need their own disc to flourish. In this context, they sound a bit like filler on what's already only a 28-minute album.

On the whole, though, this is an energetic, brilliantly layered, horn-fueled pop album that's well worth opening one's heart and mind for. It's going to go a long way in getting me through the winter.

—CASEY JARMAN

Please Step Out of the Vehicle celebrates the release of Sleeping Right and the Best in Homeopathic Magic with Pocket Parade, Merce Cunningham Duo and DJ Animal Stitches Wednesday, Sept. 27, at Ground Kontrol. 9 pm. $1. 21+. PSOOTV also plays with the Maybe Happening, Browar and Heather Q on Friday, Sept. 29, at AdventureLand. 7 pm. Free. All ages.