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BY RICHARD MARTIN
rmartin@wweek.com
Herman Jolly's demeanor doesn't peg him as a band leader. A tall, soft-spoken man with wavy black hair and a perpetually detached expression, the Sunset Valley frontman lacks the gregariousness one usually expects in a lead singer.
Yet surrounding him in the Northeast Portland bar Club 21 one recent evening, Jolly's four bandmates are less interested in discussing Sunset Valley's debut album, The New Speed (Sugar Free), than in heaping praise on their stoic friend. "The thing about Herman's songwriting," says keyboardist and producer Jeff Saltzman, "is that he has this cool personality that he's not afraid to let out in his music. His particular sense of humor and sensitivity all comes out." Jolly cracks a smile, waves his hands in the air and shakes his head back and forth in a rare gesture of silliness. His bandmates--Saltzman, guitarist Jonathan Drews, bassist Eric Furlong and drummer Tony Lash--don't even notice his uncharacteristic antics; they're too busy talking about how much respect they have for his songs. These guys have an obviously biased opinion, but they're not alone in marveling at Jolly's songwriting prowess. During the band's first-ever performance at LaLuna's balcony in October 1996, a few dozen onlookers stood with mouths agape as the singer-guitarist ambled through the twists and turns of what would become one of Sunset Valley's signature tunes. "California Now" has a melodic cleverness reminiscent of the Pixies and a stirring crescendo in which Jolly repeats the title with an emotionality that conveys exasperation, despair, relief and hopefulness all at the same time. He hadn't come out of nowhere. Jolly exhibited signs of brilliance as one of the two lead singers in Rollerball, a band he'd co-founded with some friends in Bozeman, Mont., before they collectively moved to Portland in 1994. He quit a year later and eventually began collaborating with Furlong and Drews, a guitarist who switched to drums for the inception of Sunset Valley. The three found almost instant success, generating a word-of-mouth buzz that grew louder after each performance. Suddenly, many were looking to Sunset Valley as Portland's next big thing. "I don't think we felt any pressure," Jolly says of the attention. "It made us more excited." They traveled to the Southern California town of Campbell to record at Saltzman's studio and completed The New Speed in a 10-day spree. The album's 11 tracks orbit around a loose space theme--with titles like "Skylab Love Scene," "Red Room Rocket Ride" and "Statue Robot"--and appropriately flighty music that's by turns bouncy, unswervingly smooth and as rhythmically determined as a heat-guided missile. There are noteworthy diversions as well, like "Shanghai Shelly," the imaginary cop-show theme that's become a crowd favorite at shows; the ballads "Super Girl" and "Neptune Pools"; and the haunting "Coral Man," which Jolly based on a fellow film student at Montana State University who made a movie about a guy who grows coral over his face and disappears into the woods; the filmmaker later turned up missing, Jolly says, and was found decapitated in the woods. While producing the album, Saltzman became so taken with Jolly's songwriting that he began commuting between Campbell and Portland to contribute keyboard parts to Sunset Valley's shows on an odd-looking '70s organ called a Moog/Cordovox. Last August, Saltzman signed on as a full-time member. The band expanded again while working on the song "Doll Hill," which was recently released as a 7-inch on England's Wurlitzer Jukebox label. The quartet asked Tony Lash, the ex-Heatmiser drummer who hadn't played in a band for two years, to sit in on the recording. "I knew that Jonathan was a guitar player, and they'd done a lot of cool guitar layering on the album, so I offered to play with them," Lash explains. "They took me up on it." With his band's lineup solidified and a full-length debut on record store shelves, Jolly will quietly lead Sunset Valley on its march toward national prominence, beginning with a May tour of California with the up-and-coming Bay Area groups Snowmen and Creeper Lagoon. In the meantime, Jolly can rest assured that his associates will continue to play his songs with as much passion as he puts into writing them. "I'm working with people I can completely trust," he says. "We're all really protective of Herman's songs," says Saltzman. "When Herman brings us a song, it's like this delicate thing, and we all make sure that we carry it through." |
