Local News & Reviews

[December 6th, 2006]

^Ferocious Eagle Wednesday, Dec. 6

Skinny white dudes offer WW a Greyhound love story of rock.

[POST-HARDCORE] Accidents happen, and sometimes they're bands. Ferocious Eagle is one such accident, the result of a perfectly cute and unlikely run-in on a Greyhound bus from Eugene to Portland. Granted, skinny white dudes with guitars connect on that same bus twice a day, but few of those connections result in bands worth more than the weight of this page. How much, exactly, is that weight?

I'm not sure. Unbelievably, that's one of the very few topics that went undiscussed last Wednesday night at the B-Side Tavern, during what was quite possibly the most intoxicated band interview in newspaper history.

In any case, you know how this story goes: Skinny white guy No. 1, Greg Dalbey, has trouble putting his guitar into the overhead rack on his way to play a show at a Beaverton Starbucks, and skinny white guy No. 2, Eric Jensen, helps him out. They riff about music during the two and a half hour trip and exchange numbers at the end. This could well be the beginning of a romantic comedy (or porn), but was instead the birth of a band that sounds not at all like the product of two skinny white dudes with acoustic guitars. For one, an old friend of Dalbey's from growing up in Beaverton, guitarist Jon Andersen (also skinny, white and a dude) of The Maybe Happening, makes the band a three-piece. Second, Ferocious Eagle is indeed ferocious-as-fuck, sounding something like a ripped apart Fugazi with angular guitar, lightning-fast drums and broken, half-shouted vocals. And Dalbey has a stage presence that's something akin to a miniature Henry Rollins—all veiny and red-faced. Meanwhile, Jensen (also known as acoustic songwriter Tractor Operator) beats his drums like they slapped his mother, and Andersen remains relatively collected, painting the other two all the more, um, ferocious.

The trio got picked up last spring by Michigan record label 54°40' or Fight, home to such local finery as 31 Knots and Pseudosix. 54°40' or Fight (who discovered the band via MySpace) will release the band's full-length debut in spring of 2007, but tonight's show is a release party for Ferocious Eagle's new 7-inch, Every Time You Fall You Pick Yourself Up and Fall Back To Pieces (released by local label Smells Delicious). The burst in interest has been far from expected: For most of the members, Ferocious Eagle was a side project, worth about three practice days a month and an occasional show. Now, those members face two months on the road together this spring, about twice as long as the sum of their days practicing over the past year. Accidents are funny like that.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Ferocious Eagle celebrates the release of Every Time You Fall You Pick Yourself Up and Fall Back To Pieces on Wednesday, Dec. 6, with Wax Edison and Merrick Foundation at Ground Kontrol. 9 pm. 25 cents. 21+.

^Emily Vidal Thursday, Dec. 7

The Crosswalks and Yoyodyne take you back to when casual pop was the shit.

[indie-pop] I once called Emily Vidal, the no-nonsense bassist who makes up one-third of both the Crosswalks and Yoyodyne, the "female Calvin Johnson." And though Vidal chuckled at the thought of her mellow alto channeling Johnson's deep baritone, her voice—and the way she uses it to deliver wry tales of spoiled complainers or grown-up delinquents—has the same kind of lovably smartass, good-old-'90s-pop vibe as Johnson's. The comparison's more about attitude than tone: Vidal adds something delightfully campy to both the straight-ahead indie-rock of the Crosswalks and the slightly goofier, Americana-tinged tunes of Yoyodyne. It's the same sort of smirking wit that made Johnson's Halo Benders so much fun or that legitimized Stephen Malkmus' snottiness back in the day.

And it turns out Vidal is, quite tellingly, a fan of similarly jangly indie-rock (Built to Spill, Pavement), half-serious/occasionally-deadpan vocalists (Elvis Costello, Liz Phair) and melody-fueled bass players (Sting, Kim Deal). Originally from outside Eugene, the 33-year-old brunette says she's played bass on and off since she was 15. And, though her time at the University of Oregon offered her plenty of opportunities to play in others' bands, Vidal is not only the bass player for the Crosswalks and Yoyodyne, but also a voice and a contributing songwriter.

A video producer for MetroEast Community Media (public-access TV) by day, Vidal met songwriter/guitarist Johnny Keener (who also runs Sidecar Studio, where Yoyodyne recorded its self-titled debut) through a friend of a friend, and—once they convinced Jason Greene to join on drums-—Yoyodyne was born. The band's sort of Pixies-lite aesthetic offers a perfect backdrop for Vidal's winking lyrics on songs like "Matches & Gas"—in which she outlines how to burn down your old school. And when she shifts into her upper-register to contrast the pulsing bass line of "Ghost Town," the effect makes me downright nostalgic for the Superchunck of my college radio days.

Though the Crosswalks—originally guitarist Brendan McCracken and drummer Dave Shur—recorded a fine pop EP, This Was Now, before acquiring Vidal through a Craigslist ad, the trio has now recorded a full-length to be released in the spring, and Vidal's vocals and melody-driven bass lines are indespensible to new tracks like the alternately noisy and sunny "Voices."

Vidal says she's always though of herself as a songwriter first, adding, "I like to play with melodies." And, thankfully, both the bands Vidal plays in offer the kind of quirky, punchy melodies that originally made the Northwest the shit when it came to indie-pop. And, rather than feeling over or old, those lackadaisical vocals and jangly melodies are, these days, a more-than-welcome trip down memory lane.

—AMY MCCULLOUGH.

The Crosswalks and Yoyodyne play with Dan Jones and the Squids Thursday, Dec. 7, at the White Eagle. 8:30 pm. $4. 21+.

^Plants Double Infinity (Paradigms Recordings)

Confucius, er, Plants say, "Patience is the gateway to lovely oblivion."

[DRONE FOLK] Plants has been a drone-based band since the release of its solemn, stunning debut, The Mind Is a Bird in the Hand, less than a year ago. Yet, however many measures it took for a melody or word to collect itself, that record is still a song-based effort, treading pop waters with all-the-rage freak-/free-/new-folk mechanics and Joshua Blanchard's haunting and entirely unique vocals. On Double Infinity, the band's third release in an already busy year's time—Blanchard and bandmate Molly Griffith married over the summer—they've taken drone to extremity. The 40-minute length of Double Infinity contains only three songs, with the middle track, "Double Infinity," topping out at nearly 20 minutes. This is barely remarkable within outrÉ realms of music, but Double Infinity is a remarkable test—for Plants, folk music itself and, yes, quite possibly the listener.

However ruined our collective attention spans are, this is a test wisely taken: Plants could no more condense these three pieces than one could condense the St. Johns Bridge. The opener, "The Sky Above You Seeks the Below," leads with a near-imperceptible build into Blanchard's elegant, measured intonations, a drowsy piano melody and organ drones. The song slowly rises and falls in this arrangement several times before Blanchard's voice gives way to Griffith's. Or perhaps Blanchard merely borrows her voice: She carries his hymnlike vocals so perfectly that it sounds as if he's just singing in a far higher register, the impossibility of which makes it even more tremendous.

"Double Infinity" feels much like a movement of the prior song. After playing with the same droning organ, the pace quickens and the song gains definition while maintaining a solemn, devotional vibe. A beat enters in the form of tapped cymbals and hand drums; washes of psych guitar replace the organ; Griffith's (always welcome) cello dramatics appear; and, eventually, a bass line and an (oddly welcome) quick, repeating flute melody crop up. Twenty-odd minutes in, rhythm has overtaken drone in such a way that listeners are left scrambling backward into the song, fruitlessly searching for that line. By the time the shorter, guitar-centric "Gnostic Fame" comes around—a throwback to "classic" Bird in the Hand Plants—it appears an afterthought, a gorgeous reminder of the band's capabilities. And Double Infinity is a reminder of our own capacities, as listeners, for patience, and for reverence. We need that.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Plants celebrates the release of Double Infinity Friday, Dec. 8, at Acme with Shaky Hands and Leti Angel. 10 pm. $5. 21+.

^Cartune Xprez Dec. 1 at Portland Art Center

Animation/music mash-up offers computer crit, but no dancing.

[ELECTRO-POP-ANIMATION] I'm loath to prescribe a musician their own ideal performance context; I'm especially loath when that particular musician—YACHT, in this case—could fit their entire music setup into something the size of a briefcase and theoretically play on a bus or elevator or lav. But, if I were to do such a thing, I would not prescribe a sitting-down thing, and last Friday's Cartune Xprez was indeed a sitting-down thing. Art galleries don't lend themselves well to dancing—with the notable exceptions of the now defunct Gallery 500 and the new-ish Pi-rem. So when YACHT, a.k.a. Jona Bechtolt, played to the Portland Art Center's sit-down gallery crowd of about 75 people, it was weird—not unwelcome, but weird. YACHT's ball of happy electro-pop energy just sort of bounced around without really hitting anyone.

But Cartune Xprez isn't really a music event; it's more of an animation-music-"lecture" mash-up of sorts. Friday night's event featured two hour-long stretches of animation, with the Slow Dance Recyttal capping the animation stretches and Bechtolt—performing with girlfriend and collaborative partner Claire Evans, a.k.a. Universe—stuck in the middle. Slow Dance Recyttal's an odd and sweet thing: Christopher Doulgeris and Peter Burr wore tree-like costumes and played live bass and clarinet to accompany a simply awesome animation of vibrating pine trees and digitized geodesic shapes. Perhaps there's an intended deeper meaning, but mostly it was just lovely to look at.

The meat of Bechtolt and Evans' performance wasn't YACHT music at all, but rather a faux lecture about the "Internet 2.0." The shtick is simple: Evans talks about the amazing directions the Web is taking, and then her computer slowly self-destructs into a mess of Windows pop-ups, finally offing itself blue-screen style. She runs off crying. Bechtolt follows by introducing his computer, the aforementioned self-contained music setup, and it, too, self-destructs into a Mac version of the blue screen. This is all after he shows the crowd his photo album and has a good chat with his laptop, literally, by way of an animated face. It's an obvious computer criticism, but the pair has chemistry, and it radiates into the room in waves of charisma. It works. But I can't help considering the irony of a presentation spoofing computer crashes that's totally dependent on computers. Then again, maybe that's the point: Toward the end of the show, my WW-issued digital camera flashed the hot, red words: "SYSTEM FAILURE." Perfect.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

^I Am The Arm Monday, Dec. 11

New drummer LKN understands why I Am the Arm has "gotta be so rock."

[SO ROCK] Partway through one of several short noise/poetry interludes on I Am the Arm's debut LP, Glory Hound, the chaos pauses for a clip of someone whining, "Why do you guys gotta be so rock?" It sounds rehearsed, but vocalist/bandleader Boyd Andersson assures me it's one of dozens of caught-on-tape, half-joking complaints made by former Arm drummer Matt Farina, who, after laying down his tracks, left the band.

The rest of the trio was unhappy with what Farina left behind, but, not wanting to start over four months into the album, decided to simply bury the drums in the mix and push forward. The resulting raw, lo-fi sound—often held together by Andersson's thumping, finger-picked bass, played just a few inches from his chin in the old-fashioned style—accentuates guitarist Ed Edwards' alternating abrasive noise and twisted blues-funk. "Me Likey the Stranger" features a series of guitar scrapes that would make Tom Morello proud, followed by a straight, heavy stoner-metal solo and a concluding, near-death metal explosion. Even the somewhat funky main riff to "Drivin' Ms. Daisy," which is reminiscent of Pink Floyd's "Money," pummels the ear with sharp guitar and distorted vocals.

But after finishing the album last summer, I Am the Arm needed a drummer who could match that power. Andersson stumbled across a jazz improv show at the 9th Avenue Public House where Lauren K. Newman, best known for her solo work as LKN, was drumming. Having seen Newman drum when I sat in for a songwriting session at her home studio ("Wrecking Crew," WW, May 3, 2006), I can personally corroborate Andersson's description of her skill: "She was just a monster." But almost as alluring to Andersson as her talent was her presence and persona. "I've never seen anyone so unashamed to take off their clothes and throw their drums at people," said Andersson of Newman's destructive finale that night. Newman went home with a copy of Glory Hound, but it took a couple of months and emails from Andersson before she gave it a good listen, dug the Captain Beefheart influence and decided to give it a shot. "The music is already really great," she told me over the phone last week, "but I think it could be even better if they add another creative force to the mix." And Newman, if anything, is a force.

—JASON SIMMS.

I am the Arm plays their first show with Newman on drums at Tube on Monday, Dec. 11, with Rye Wolves and DJ Nate C. 9:30 pm. $3. 21+. For complete Q&As with Newman and Andersson, visit LocalCut.com.