Inside Voices, Sunday, Feb. 1

[January 28th, 2009]

[WIND ROCK] A little over two weeks ago, local trio Inside Voices found itself on a bill with a lineup of experimental musicians making atonal drones. And though Inside Voices is technically a “rock” band, guitarist John Gnorski says it went pretty well.

“I was kind of a jazz nerd in middle school and high school—I really didn’t play rock or know that much about it until I was 17 or 18,” the 25-year-old guitarist says over coffee at the Northwest Portland outpost of Anna Bannana’s. “This was the first time we’d played with people that were clearly more on the experimental end of the spectrum and I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is the most pop-ish music I’ve ever made.’”

The “pop-ish” trio—Gnorski, bassist Lee Slack and drummer Jeff Brodsky, friends from Bard College who moved to Portland two years ago after growing up on the East Coast—makes concise, sharp rock tunes that, while deceptively simple, aren’t the least bit fussy. Gnorski’s jazz background is apparent in both his songs’ arrangements (which often feature no chorus or bridge) and in the way his guitar runs, dances, ducks and hides in each crevice of an Inside Voices song. On “Living on the Range,” his guitar is a high, buzzing tone in your ear, a repeating quarter-note figure that spirals around Brodsky’s rat-tat-tat drums and Slack’s steady, pulsing bass line. The trio’s songs feature few words, usually sung in unison by Gnorski and Slack. The band lets its instruments do most of the talking.

“The basic framework for the band has always revolved around being pretty minimal,” Gnorski says. “I played a bit of clarinet on a few demos, but generally I really like the way we sound as a three-piece.” With that in mind, Inside Voices is set to record its debut in two weeks at Type Foundry studio. Gnorski says the band plans to track everything live with minimal overdubs to preserve the organic, tight live sound he favors. Just don’t expect anything to rock, exactly.

“I feel like I’m still a total nerdy musician and not cut out to be a rocker,” he says, laughing. But with Inside Voices, Gnorski gets to be both.