Local News & Reviews

[January 31st, 2007]

^The Nice Boys Saturday, Feb. 3

How playing drums helped the Nice Boys' leadman move on after tragedy.

[POWER POP] "We forced him back into music by getting him to play drums for us," explains Nice Boys guitarist Gabe Lageson at a downtown coffee shop. He's telling the story of how now lead singer/guitarist—and lone surviving member of the Exploding Hearts—Terry Six joined the informal group that eventually became the Nice Boys. Lageson then says to Six, "And it seemed like you got so happy and so into playing drums. You just look nuts when you're playing drums."

Six—who switched to frontman as the members of the proto-Nice Boys split—says the only things he knows how to do are make pizza and play music. Since he finds the latter more fulfilling, there was never any question as to whether he would return to music after the 2003 accident that killed his previous bandmates (the Hearts' tour van veered out of control while returning home from a San Francisco concert). Gabe says, "It was really weird for him to play music with different people, since he had been playing with [the Exploding Hearts] since high school." Of his return to music, Six adds, "I don't think Gabe even knew I played drums. He was just being nice. But it was that initial step, and I took it."

Mirroring that return, Six says he and Lageson also start with the drums when they write their simply structured yet detail- oriented retro pop songs. "A lot of people just write a song and make the lead vocals cool and the guitar rock and don't really worry about it," says Lageson. "We really work on everything." And the Nice Boys' self-titled debut reflects that attentiveness: The increasingly frequent short drum rolls in "Ain't That Beat" or the synchronized low bass notes and cymbals that keep the backbeat of "Dugong Along," for instance, are the sort of touches that make the Nice Boys' music fit for the glory days of arena rock (before arenas were all renamed for their sponsors).

The Nice Boys' look—which consists of puffy ascot ties, tight (often striped) pants and pointy boots—fits that aesthetic as well. But the wholesome and familiar-sounding vocals, boyish lyrics and choppy rhythm guitar of the Nice Boys' fun-loving sound belie the difficult aspects of Six's continuing music career. When asked if touring is hard for him, Six says, "Yeah, it sucks. [The Nice Boys] did go to California in February, and I made the drive back. You know, that same drive. It really fucked me up. But after that it was fine. That was the drive that I had to do, and I did it. I finished it."

—JASON SIMMS.

The Nice Boys play with Cafeteria Dance Fever, Bug Nasties, the Eegos, Ape City R&B, the Fe Fi Fo Fums and the Bugs Saturday, Feb. 3, at Slabtown. 7 pm. Free. 21+. Also see Riff City, page 41, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday music listings for "The Bender."

^Jerry Joseph April Nineteenth (Cosmo Sex School)

Jerry Joseph's latest doesn't let the bastards get it down.

[HONEST MUSIC] We live in disingenuous times. From our cowboy president on down to the support-our-troops "country" anthems that clutter the FM dial (the proceeds of which march nobly into the pockets of their down-home millionaire performers), ours is a country full of apple-pie hucksters who wouldn't know America if it punched them in the face. The point is, it feels really good to hear someone whose words come from actual life experience rather than the Heritage Foundation. Jerry Joseph's new album, April Nineteenth, isn't perfect, but it carries the weight of authenticity—quite a heavy weight indeed.

Joseph, a seldom-sung hero of the Portland roots community, opens the album (a pseudo-live affair recorded at Mississippi Studios and doctored up in the studio) with "White Stag," a homecoming anthem that captures some last-night-of-the-tour magic and pays tribute to Burnside Street's homeless. Where many songwriters would resort to clichÉs or even degrading stereotypes (cough, Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise"), Joseph, an ex-heroin addict, speaks of street life with familiarity and warmth. "Under the White Stag," he sings, "Everybody knows that you're back again."

While such warmth continues throughout—helped in no small part by Mississippi Studios' cozy setting and formidable guest appearances by the Decemberists' Jenny Conlee and the SOB's David Lipkind—it sometimes seems, as on "Break It Down" and "Miles From Here," that the band is just lying in wait for the chorus. The choruses, though, lush with vocal harmonies À la Joe Cocker or Van Morrison, are almost always worth the wait.

At his best, Joseph tells his own story and provides comfort for similarly wayward souls in one fell swoop. On "The Night I Got Drunk," for instance, the narrator (presumably betraying his 12-step program) admits, "On the night I got drunk/ I looked to my heart/ And all the relationships I tore apart."

I've never been an alcoholic or an addict, and I've never lived on the streets, but Jerry Joseph speaks to me anyway. The America he has experienced seems a lot more familiar, and a lot more real, than the one that's stuck all over my neighbor's bumper or burning up the country charts. I guess a little authenticity goes a long way.

—CASEY JARMAN.

Joseph celebrates the release of April Nineteenth Friday, Feb. 2, at Dante's. 9:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

^GRAILS BLACK TAR PROPHECIES Vols. 1, 2 & 3 (Important)

Grails breaks free of self-imposed genre restrictions on Black Tar.

[post-everything] For reasons unknown, Grails has slid into the elusive (and, fortunately, shrinking) group of local musicians known informally as the "Portland Export Club": These artists enjoy massive renown outside PDX and embark on far-reaching tours, but they live and practice here in relative obscurity—which is precisely why you're reading this some six months after Black Tar Prophecies' release.

But it could be six or 16 years post-release, and Black Tar would still carry weight and resonance. This single-CD collection of rare European EPs and vinyl splits stands as one of the most important releases of 2006, and certainly the most important of the now-quintet's eight-year career. And it totally negates past (well-deserved) notions that Grails belonged in the pigeonhole with other bearers of the smoldering "build-to-burn" post-rock torch such as Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai.

Like those bands at their worst, drama has often trumped true experimentation for Grails. Oddly enough, when it would have made the most sense for Grails to languish in drama—violin player Timothy Horner disappeared at an airport in 2005, the rumored source of this disc's title—the band instead balanced those two aesthetics, creating a sound that's almost impossibly wide-reaching, gorgeous, unique and, most of all, heavy.

That weight manifests itself differently in nearly every song. Among the most immediate is "Belgian Wake-Up Drill," a metal dirge that vaguely echoes the doom metal of bands like the Hidden Hand or Sleep. The track could be a black sheep on the album, but it's wonderfully preceded by the unlikely "Bad Bhang Recipe," a slow-mover of echoing percussion (something of a Grails trademark), seething psych guitar and a dark bass groove.

"Stray Dog"—a mindfully somber bending of Celtic sounds into American folk—is also wrenchingly beautiful, and its mournful banjo recurs on Black Tar's title track, a devastating, haunting, eight-minute slow builder that immediately recalls GYBE!'s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. Yet, instead of burning the song down in disorder, Grails builds and develops the track into a strange, dark take on old jazz forms. Grails has found sobriety and reflection in its music's construction rather than its collapse—an aspect that truly sets it apart from other members of its ex-genre.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Grails play with Om and Steven Wray Lobdell Friday, Feb. 2, at the Doug Fir. 9 pm. $12. 21+.

^Coldbringer Lust and Ambition (self-released)

Coldbringer brings a lukewarm debut with a couple of hot spots.

[HARDCORE] The moderately paced, relatively laid-back punk of Coldbringer is not what you would expect from two former members of From Ashes Rise. It's not necessarily a bad surprise: I just thought I might have had the record on the wrong speed (even though it was already on 45) when vocalist John Wilkerson—who did some high-speed screaming in the pretty darn metal FAR—came through the speakers sounding like Lemmy Kilmister.

In some ways, the sonic face put forth on the local five-piece's debut, Lust and Ambition, is sublime. It's heavy without sounding strained, which makes the more impassioned moments stand out. The dead stop near the end of opening track "Metaphysical Ways," for instance—after which Wilkerson manages to maintain his vocal rumble (hear that scar tissue!) while raising his pitch to shout, "With the violence we create!"—is all the more affecting for its restraint.

But there are some serious kinks in the record. Although drummer Machine Gun Mary hits hard and really nails the crashes and fills in places where the progression is choppy, her snare drum sounds like a block of wood in a concrete room; while the overall beat should be driving, it tends to be off-putting and exhausting instead. And, perhaps because he's used to screaming more abrasively, Wilkerson also tends to pause in odd places lyrically and crunch too many syllables into his lines. While a vocalist can get away with these sorts of things when singing totally indecipherable lyrics, it's sort of grating if you're actually listening to the words.

And the words, by the way, are worth listening to: The stories in songs like "Live Fast Die Young," in which a work-worn father tells his son to consider a different path, are creative lyrical endeavors. But nowhere is Lust and Ambition more solid lyrically, melodically and compositionally than on the title track. It's a portrait of a working-class heavy drinker, and you can hear sadness and frustration in Wilkerson's voice as he sings, "Bury me here boys...I've given enough to pay the rent/ Prop me up on the bar and keep my glass full." Many of the songs on Lust conclude with a guitar lead in the background over the last verse or chorus, and that effect really pushes the overall mood of regret on "Lust and Ambition": It's a track that manages to overcome the album's shortcomings as a whole, and it's one that I will surely return to over time.

—JASON SIMMS.

Coldbringer plays a benefit for the National Center for Animal Law on Friday, Feb. 2, at Satyricon with Strike Anywhere, Red Mark of Madness, Dispossessed and Drunken Boat. 7 pm. $8. All ages.

^Menomena Jan. 28 at Crystal Ballroom

Menomena's live show makes good on an unlikely, 3-year-old promise.

[experimental-pop perfection...in the flesh] During Menomena's 2004 I Am the Fun Blame Monster! brilliance spree, I was lucky enough to see the experimental pop trio perform four, maybe five times. The crux of these performances happened during mid-summer in a sweltering Lola's Room: The song was "Strongest Man in the World"—a slow-burning pop number of heavy, looping atmospheric synth cut with delicate piano and simple, tender vocals—and the performance was so affecting it brought my then-girlfriend to tears.

But, by the last time I saw Menomena play that year—before the band slipped into a three-year hiatus/incubation—its live show had flagged and gotten tired, even bored. I never expected to see the sort of crux that happened that night at Lola's again, and I don't think I was the only one. I suspect the band also knew it had something to live up to, as its members—Brent Knopf, Danny Seim and Justin Harris—came out with guns blazing this past Sunday at the Crystal Ballroom. Complete with a 20-person choir and notable guest players Joe Haege (31Knots) and Brandon Summers (Helio Sequence) on guitar and drums, respectively, Menomena's performance—a dual celebration of the ballroom's 93rd birthday and the release of the band's sophomore full-length, Friend and Foe—was flawless, the sort of flawless that makes you feel like a jackass for clapping for an encore.

So, yes, I was wrong. Menomena resurrected "Strongest Man" for the near-capacity crowd, and it sounded as fresh as if the band had just discovered the song the day before—and spent every second since honing it to perfection. Such was the case with everything the trio played, which included a select few classics from Blame Monster! as well as nearly everything from the devastatingly perfect Friend and Foe (released Jan. 23).

And new track "Rotten Hell," for me, was Sunday night's parallel to that pinnacling moment in 2004: The words "We'll get through this mess together/ Arm in arm/ Shoulder to shoulder," however simple, were absolutely crushing to hear live. But I suspect most members of the crowd had their own "Strongest Man" or "Rotten Hell"—a personal favorite, an individual reminder that, once again, Menomena is simply the best band making music in Portland.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Search "Menomena" at LocalCut.com to read a review of Friend & Foe.