Old Growth. Under the Sun (Bakery Outlet)

[August 27th, 2008]

[MOSS PUNK] I have 15,826 songs on my iPod. In the past two weeks, I’ve really only listened to 12 of them. I’m smitten with Old Growth’s second full-length, Under the Sun. So when I mention this trio in the same breath as two well-loved PDX acts normally beyond compare—Dead Moon and the Exploding Hearts—I hope you’ll forgive me my trespasses. Under the Sun integrates the dank, earthy garage punk of the former and the harmony-fueled restlessness of the latter without a single hitch. Call it knowing your place: For four and a half years, Old Growth has studied Northwest rock—from the Wipers to Mudhoney—right down to its choice of distortion pedals, without sacrificing muses as disparate as Neil Young and the Replacements, and without losing its own restless, youthful voice.

Like a lot of great rock records, Under the Sun is an album about growing up, or moreover fighting to stay a free soul while your generation starts gathering dust. The lyrics are outright genius when they’re not clumsily poetic, with “Wasted the Day” offering a bit of both while announcing the album’s central thesis: “Ain’t gonna sit on a shelf like a book / Ain’t gonna hang like a shingle on a roof / Ain’t gonna wait for the fire to burn out.” “Roam” stays on message (“Maybe you should roam”) while a high-hat gallup suddenly explodes and a guitar riff that sounds like Bad Religion’s “Don’t Pray on Me” by way of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” rings out.

But it’s not the lyrics that make Under the Sun a classic—it’s that it does everything you forgot a rock record was supposed to do. John Magnifico’s driving guitar rings with passion you haven’t heard since Hüsker Dü’s New Day Rising, and vocal harmonies come out of nowhere to puncture your heart when “Southern Charm” is cranked up loud. This type of record isn’t supposed to come out of Portland in 2008—it’s absent both irony and violin—but from Minneapolis in ’85 or Seattle in ’91. It would have been considered a classic either way, and it’s one hell of a record now.