Local News & Reviews

[February 21st, 2007]

^A Weather Wednesday, Feb. 21

A Weather's future is so bright...well, you know.

[LUSH FOLK] A Weather's primary songwriter, Aaron Gerber, has a book on stress reduction for songwriters on hold at the Multnomah County Library. It might seem melodramatic, but the 24-year-old's got good reason: His unsuspecting indie-folk group (which has existed in its current incarnation for less than a year) is about to open for indie-folk giant Bright Eyes at Seattle's Showbox (March 11).

The mostly acoustic quintet usually plays venues along the lines of the coffee-shop-sized Valentine's or, at the largest, mid-sized Holocene; the Showbox (which is sold out for Bright Eyes) holds 1,200. "It's surreal," says fellow A Weather vocalist Sarah Winchester. But, considering her voice—something akin to a more humble Cat Power or a female Sam Beam (Iron & Wine)—and Gerber's hushed, resonant vocals and half-cryptic, half-sentimental lyrics, it's certainly not surprising. Like Ida with a little more blood in its veins or Red House Painters cut with edgy bits of noise and smoky female vocals, A Weather achieves something unsettling yet warm, a richly textured sound that's as charming as it is totally depressing.

But the members of A Weather (originally Gerber, Winchester and now-departed member ZÖe Wright) have plenty to be happy about: Besides playing with Conor Oberst's Bright Eyes, the band's also about to release a 7-inch ("The Feather Test") on Oberst's Team Love label. One of A Weather's many guitarists, Aaron Krenkel mentions that his brother (Nate Krenkel) co-founded the label alongside the boy-faced wunderkind of emo-folk: "I email [my brother] all the time," Krenkel explains, "and I'm always like, 'Oh, this is fuckin' awesome. Check this out.'" Krenkel says a lot of his recommendations are met with dead ears. But A Weather elicited an email from the label saying, basically, "This is amazing."

And it is. Rounded out by drummer Lou Thomas and guitarist Zach Boyle (formerly of Super XX Man), A Weather's sound is, in many ways, in line with the soft 'n' fuzzy influences Gerber lists on the band's MySpace page: "cats, rugs, the combination of cats and rugs." But it's also dark, melancholy and knowing. When Gerber sings, "It takes a lot to make you cry/ And I will/ I will," his deep voice—surrounded by layers of careful picking and sweeps of close-to-tears female vocals—is so soft and lovely that his foreboding words almost slip by unnoticed. "I think we're cute as people," says Gerber. "I don't think [A Weather]'s overly cute, musically." Kenkel jokes, "If it were, I'd be out of here." But A Weather's music is far more quaint than twee—and, by the look of things, it's not going anywhere.

—AMY MCCULLOUGH.

A Weather plays Wednesday, Feb. 21, with The Builders and the Butchers and Gregory Miles Harris at the Towne Lounge. 9:30 pm. Free. 21+. "The Feather Test" comes out on Team Love Records on Tuesday, March 6.

^BOOMBOX FRIDAY Friday, Feb. 23

Learn to love the throb at one of the best dance parties around.

[CEREBRAL DANCE] A dance party is perhaps the most basic and pure collective musical experience that exists. It's physical and sonic harmony: ass to ass, hip to hip, ear to ear. (Inanimate Portland indie rockers, don't knock it till you've joined in the shake.) And, after a year of cerebral throb, Holocene's semi-regular dance night, Boombox Friday, has proven itself to be the finest eve in Portland for finally surrendering to a beat.

Yeah, the beat's gotten a bad rap over the years—blame top-40 crud (go ahead and torch me, but Justin and Missy didn't save anything), or ridiculously bare and (often) mindless trance, or drum 'n' bass. But Boombox Friday—though rarely abstract enough to keep the radio kids and ravers scratching their heads outside—showcases some of the most complicated techno brains around. Bills have included Nice Nice (one of only a few American acts on London's revered Warp Records), Solenoid (a father of the local electronic scene), E*Rock (the gentleman behind the Audio Dregs label), (alleged time-travelers) the Cascadian Knights, San Francisco's (truly) live techno duo Eats Tapes and, well, the list goes on. E*Rock's appearance at this Friday's anniversary party will, in fact, be the night's only repeat—fittingly so, as he headlined the very first Boombox Friday.

But, despite the fact that it now seems like a platform for Portland's dance music avant-garde, BF's roots aren't exactly in what you'd call progressive dance music. The night started after its co-founders, co-curators and resident DJs, Manny Reyes (a.k.a. DJ BJ, Atole and one-third of Do N' Dudes) and Paul Dickow (a.k.a. DJ P. Disco, Strategy), ended a strictly disco night last winter at Crush. According to Reyes, the two DJs figured out pretty quickly that their new night would have to go a wider route and be a "full-on dance night" for it to work at the relatively mammoth Holocene.

Yet, the night's been overwhelmingly successful in maintaining its self-proclaimed "underground" status. Reyes says it's a lot of the same faces on the dance floor for every show—a consistent, comfortable scene of friends, regulars and friends of friends. But that means the party's still not busting out of the club's walls, which also means that some Portlanders are still stuck in stone on these exceptional Fridays. Hopefully you're not one of 'em.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Dat'r, E*Rock and DJs P. Disco and BJ play Friday, Feb. 23, at Holocene. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

^Autistic Youth Sunday, Feb. 25

Autistic Youth's debut reveals a talent the young punks always had.

[PUNK] As a band that started out with all its members in their early teens, Autistic Youth—now made up of 17- to 20-year-olds—has done a lot of growing up. A few years ago, its young members could be seen passing out fliers in front of the Paris Theatre or sporting short-shorts at Solid State and sounding, though not great, somewhat better than the "shitty-sounding punk" that drummer Seve Sheldon says characterized the band at that time.

But by last year, the local four-piece was already recording a stunning debut full-length (which ranked as my second-favorite local album of 2006 on LocalCut.com). While Landmine Beach shows how far the group's members have come, a couple of older songs on the record also prove they always had it in them. Outside a recent Manholes show, leadman Adam Becker said he thinks producer Pat Kearns (Exploding Hearts, forthcoming Clorox Girls) was able to lend the record a sense of continuity thanks to his "thought-about but not overproduced" production style. Indeed, the rough yet rich-sounding "What's it to You?"—which also appeared as the B-side to "Banned from the Roseland," a kind of stupid but fun 2005 single—seems in no way out of place on the more mature full-length.

In fact, the song's lyrical attempt to touch on the human condition through the perspective of a homeless punk carries a pre-1985 Bad Religion aesthetic. Though Becker lacks the poetry of BR's Greg Graffin at the same age, he and the rest of AY make up for it with instrumental nuances: Their medium-paced, moderately bleak punk leaves room for skillful bass, drum fills and guitar ornamentation that—like the patient leads of another standout track, "Empty Eyes"—recall Denmark's No Hope for the Kids, as do the splashes of minor chords during the intro to the album's stellar title track.

In recent shows, AY has generally represented Landmine Beach well. Though matured, the band's members are not overly serious, either: "The short shorts still come out at hot shows on tour," says bassist Nick Vicario. Despite such fun antics, it's still easy to forget how young the members of Autistic Youth are—especially considering they're already touring nationally. But age provides obstacles there, as well: The now-18-year-old Becker says his mother said no to his going on the band's first tour about a year ago. He went anyway, and his reason, like AY's music, displays an insight beyond his years: "I knew she wasn't going to hate me forever for it," he explained, "and she didn't."

—JASON SIMMS.

Autistic Youth plays with This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, Defiance Ohio and Red Herring on Sunday, Feb. 25, at Satyricon. 7 pm. Cover. All ages. See also Music listings.

^The Blow Feb. 16 at Holocene

Blurring the line between performance art and live music.

[BOUNCE AND SWEAT] Performances by artists like the Blow or YACHT are bound to leave certain types of music fans—rockists, techno heads, pop kids—feeling somewhat empty. Both acts consist of vocals—by Khaela Maricich and Jona Bechtolt, respectively—layered over pretracked everything: beats, bass, synth and backing vocals. Both acts also incorporate frantic calls for attention via jerky dancing, coversational tangents (that verge on stand-up routines) and projected backdrops. On one hand, many rockists don't even consider a laptop an instrument; on the other, techno-heads don't dig the spectacle. And a disturbing number of the pop kids (according to a string of comments on iTunes.com) think the Blow's breakout Paper Television just plain doesn't have shit on D4L's "Laffy Taffy," a hilariously prevalent mainstream reference.

Given all that, the Blow-YACHT package still sold out Holocene this past Friday night (and probably could have sold out a venue twice its size). The dancing, gleeful throng that the Blow's music, a combo of Maricich's vocals and Bechtolt's electronic beats, begs for never materialized—save for a soft spot in the room's sweaty center. But damn if the crowd didn't look enraptured. No doubt Tara Jane O'Neil's opening set (the night's strongest) helped set the mood: She played a few minimized, looping folkscapes from her latest LP, In Circles, that were eventually reduced further into a mesmerizing four-way drum circle that included Tom Greenwood (Jackie-O Motherfucker) and local songwriter Ilyas Ahmed. Bechtolt's YACHT set—a sweaty, ragged dance mania on the edge of performance art—followed.

And, finally, as is pretty much the norm these days, Maricich took the stage by herself, beginning with an a capella number accompanied by nothing more than her index finger rhythmically tapping the mic. The rest of the set, which featured the Blow's usual programmed beats, was filled mostly with tracks from Paper Television—including "Parentheses," which can pump good energy into a room like nothing else—and a couple off 2004's Poor Aim: Love Songs. One of those older tracks, the oh-so-perfect "The Love That I Crave" sounded oddly bare stripped of local producer Strategy's well-known 4/4 club-style reworking. But such a version would have been out of place: Maricich's stage presence is total humanity at its most dangerously endearing. She's someone who sweetly begs your crush while totally possessed by her own songs, whether they're coming from one voice or backed by a whole computer of sound.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

^Fireballs of Freedom Feb. 16 at Berbati's

Who turned the hose on the Fireballs of Freedom?

[PSYCHEDELIC HARDCORE] The Fireballs of Freedom are nothing short of a legend in this town. With a cultish entourage, the four-piece relocated here in the late '90s from Missoula, Mont., set up shop at EJ's, and put on the kind of shows that are now described by those who saw them with the same kind of awe and disbelief that one would use to recall a natural disaster.

Yet, it was hard to believe I was in the presence of such a legend last Friday at Berbati's 20th anniversary show. Of course, there was a glow of greatness about drummer Sammy James, as his fiery fills sometimes inspired him to stand while playing. And glory permeated guitarist Kelly Gately's leads as he channeled Wayne Kramer and Jimi Hendrix through the bottle of red wine he brought onstage. But Friday's audience was much more responsive to openers Black Elk and Red Fang, and—as the crowd thinned from about 150 to 40 people over the course of the Fireballs' hour and a half set—I started to wonder what all the fuss was about.

What's odd is that, as far as I (a relative newcomer to the band) could tell, FOF wasn't doing anything all that different from what it always has. The set was long, but almost a decade ago, then-WW music editor Zach Dundas wrote that the Fireballs "can play for hours without having their thirst for rock 'n' roll slaked" (WW, Jan. 27, 1999). Back then, however, the fans' thirst for FOF wasn't easily "slaked," either.

During a long instrumental jam near the end of the set, I grabbed a couple of women in their late 20s as they were leaving the bar and questioned them. They had seen the Fireballs for the first time about seven years ago at Dante's, and when I asked them how that show compared with this one, one of the women (who didn't want her name printed next to criticism of a band she loves) said, "Well, we're leaving, and that didn't used to happen."

So what changed? As "Fryin' Up," one of the group's most anthemic songs, failed to stir the exhausted audience, I continued to wonder. It's not like Portland forgot how to rock: Slabtown's reopening celebration earlier this month saw audiences freaking out to music very similar in style to the Fireballs'. I guess the kings of EJ's have lost a step since the demise of that storied club, but where that step was lost, exactly, is hard to say.

—JASON SIMMS.