.Braille
Stars CD release show
Lola's Room
1332 W Burnside St., 225-5555,
ext 8811
9 pm Monday,
Oct. 30
Portland label
Wicked Witch, run by Ozone Records owner Janell Hell, released
Golden Dream.
Braille Stars
have already opened for Quasi in San Francisco and L.A.,
but their dream tour would be with Sonic Youth or Blonde
Redhead.
If Stef Darensbourg, drummer and back-up vocalist for the
Portland duo Braille Stars, is in the mood to make sweeping
statements, you can hardly blame her.
"We're not chick singer/songwriters," she stresses, with
just a hint of frustration. Despite the marked absence of
gender politics, ladylike priss or riot grrl growl in their
music, Darensbourg and guitarist Gilly Ann Hanner constantly
struggle to escape the girl-band ghetto.
"It's always a problem," Darensbourg laments. "It
breeds resentment. It makes you go,
'I'm so sick of getting compared
to you!'"
Hanner agrees. "When someone says we remind them of Pink
Floyd or King Crimson," she says, "we're like, 'Thank you!'"
Darensbourg and Hanner are good at lots of things, but
coloring inside the lines of people's expectations isn't
one of their particular skills. Their songs aren't traditional
pop nuggets but explorations of improvised jams. And there's
no Lilith-style strumming or overbearing, heart-on-her-sleeve
lyrics to be found on the band's impressive debut album,
Golden Dream. Instead, vocals colored with impressionistic
lyrics hang back in the mix, one thread in a tapestry of
sound.
Hanner got her start a decade ago with Portland's riotous
Calamity Jane, which developed a loyal following and even
toured with Nirvana in the early '90s. After the demise
of her first band, Hanner played with Starpower, Semi-sweet
and No. 2, among others.
Darensbourg first played guitar with local band Toadvine
five years ago, and that's where she met Hanner, who joined
on bass. Darensbourg traded in her guitar for drumsticks
soon after, and the two have been collaborating ever since--in
the much-adored Semi-sweet, as well as Starpower and the
short-lived Darth Vader's Daughter, with Hanner's sister
Megan.
Darensbourg says that brief band fundamentally changed
how both she and Hanner approach music.
"It was when we finally busted out and were like, 'I'm
not going to sit in my room with a fucking guitar and write
a song anymore. This is boring,'" she recalls. Hanner nods
in agreement.
"Neither one of us has sat down in a room and tried to
write a song with an acoustic guitar for a long time," adds
Hanner. "And whenever I do, I'm like, 'Yuck. I hate doing
this, it's horrible! Where's my delay pedal?'"
"And we made that band, and we jammed and jammed, and it
was the best, raddest music ever," Darensbourg continues,
"and then Megan was like, 'I don't want to do this.'"
The two forged on, exploring their newly-adopted improv
style. Then they found a name for their project while recording
practice sessions.
"We had gone to the Goodwill and gotten some shit that
was worthless," Darensbourg recalls. "And one of the things
we got were books on tape for blind people with the titles
in braille. So we had a jam and we taped it on one of those
things, and we were like, 'What are we going to call it?'
So we just decided on Braille." They added "Stars" to decrease
the chances of bumping into a band with the same name.
"Also, I started thinking about the concept of 'braille
stars,'" says Hanner. "And I thought 'Well, music could
be like stars to someone who can't see. How could you explain
what stars look like to someone who can't see?'"
Golden Dream, recorded at Jackpot Studios with Larry
Crane manning the 24-track, bristles with aggressive, driving
tracks rife with scathing guitars. But the record also has
its share of laid-back melodic moments and meditative instrumentals,
layered atop a single repetitive guitar line. Having 24
tracks to work with in the studio allowed the duo to expand
on their live sound, but, as their live shows demonstrate,
the collective energy, ideas and confidence of Hanner and
Darensbourg alone are far from lacking. In the band's division
of labor, Hanner focuses on melodies and lyrics, while Darensbourg
thinks in terms of arrangements, beats and harmonies.
"My take on lyrics has totally changed," Hanner admits.
"When I started in Calamity Jane, I was really like [shouting]
'Blahhh!' You know, 'I've gotta yell my lyrics out and they're
very important and I'm mad! And you're gonna listen and
I don't care if it hurts your ears--in fact, I hope it does!'
I was 21. Now I want it to be positive, and I want it to
be beautiful."
Besides Hanner's maturing approach to lyrics, the duo's
entire philosophy of making music has evolved.
"We just want to listen to this and think it sounds good
ourselves, as opposed to sounding like another band," says
Hanner. "It's not like you consciously try to emulate other
bands, but you're influenced by them. It's like seeing somebody
who dresses cute, so you get the same outfit and then it
doesn't look the same at all on you. It's the same in music.
You try on all this stuff that you like, but it's not you.
"Part of improvising is feeling comfortable enough to go
on stage and be like 'I don't care if everybody's watching
me. I'm just gonna play. And if it's good, we'll all know
it. If it's not, who cares? It's just a show at Satyricon
or the Tonic Lounge, everyone will go home and get drunk
anyway. If it's bad, we'll just stop and do something else,'"
Hanner says.
"It's usually always good, though," Darensbourg reminds
her.
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