|
Cosmos
Group
Fried
Robot Boogie & Ascension
Shuffle
Boil
Last
of the Juanitas
Hawaii
Flapping
Jet
|
|
Bratmobile,
Aisler's Set, Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater
Meow
Meow
527 SE Pine
St., 230-2122
9 pm Friday,
Dec. 1
$8; all ages
There are all kinds of rock bands. There are rock bands
that provide pleasant fantasy escapes into worlds where
everyone is better looking and ingests more entertaining
drugs. There are bands that paste together diverting replicas
of bygone fashions and styles, allowing devoted listeners
to delve vicariously into the exciting worlds of, say, Swinging
London or the supposed '50s juvenile-delinquent scene. There
are the untold thousands of bands that mostly jam out on
"Hey Joe."
And then there are the bands that can staple your cranium
to the wall with the force and precision of a hydraulic
nail gun, bands of pulverizing power and baffling complexity,
bands that dare to dream of a bolder Tomorrow, etc. Portland
is blessed with several such bands; two of them, Cosmos
Group and Last of the Juanitas, have new albums,
reminders of just how much gorgeous aural damage a few people
with truly titanic amplifiers can inflict.
The two bands happen to share a drummer, the prodigious
Johnny Schier, whose elastic, stinging and perfectly
economical beats make a lot of the mayhem possible in both
cases. With Cosmos Group, a trio with the wanderlust and
spatial instincts of an avant-garde jazz band, it often
seems that Schier is the spit and baling wire binding a
crazed, Beyond Thunderdome contraption.
Guitarist Dewey Mahood and bassist Jude Weber
both launch screaming, winding and rambling excursions on
Fried Robot Boogie & Ascension, an album
that captures much of the kinetic fury of the band's live
shows. In the midst of their most extravagant improv expansionism,
Schier's stone-steady time-keeping really does hold everything
together. At the same time, the assured drummer shows an
intuitive instinct for the moments when he has space to
burst forward on his own, peeling off death-defying barrages
of scattering beats. In fact, in Fried Robot's best
moments, Cosmos Group works like a well-oiled soccer team,
its members adept at dropping back in support of whoever
takes the brave glory run of the moment.
With Mahood's howling vocals few and far between, this
mostly instrumental album could fit, somewhat uneasily,
into the loose bounds drawn for "math rock." Most examples
of that willfully difficult genre, with their arcane time-signature
switches and anti-melodic chord structures, feel more like
someone's bedroom studio experiments than fully realized
songs. Cosmos Group plows through a few awkward, jammed-up
moments on Fried Robot, but mostly the band succeeds
in unleashing a storm that's as wide-open as it is intricate.
While Cosmos Group has established itself as one of Portland's
most promising new bands over the past year, Last of the
Juanitas has plied its heavy-swinging trade for some time.
If Hawaii, the trio's new long-player, is
any indication, though, its relocation from sunny San Diego
to sloppy Portland has done it nothing but good.
Despite the title, the only thing tropical about this album
is its monsoon turbulence. Some of the off-kilter rhythms
vaguely recall the Cosmos Group's mind-spinning tactics,
but the Juanitas are twice as loud and infinitely more dense.
Make no mistake, this is a crushing album, and if you want
to wreck your stereo's speakers, it could pull off the job.
Producer Tim Green, whose own band The Fucking
Champs packs plenty of weight itself, favors guitarist
Maurice Giles and bassist Lana Rebel with
vast and rich treatment, while Schier's drums and cymbals
hit like long-range artillery ordnance. Hawaii comes
closer than the band's previous recordings to approximating
its viselike live shows, and this is a very good thing.
For all the bombast, however, the album's most ominous moments
come on songs like "The Debigulator," when the terrible
pressure relents for a moment in favor of a simmering, swinging
quiet, only to suffer total obliteration in a shower of
volume seconds later.
Neither Last of the Juanitas nor Cosmos Group sounds much
like an archetypal rock band as defined by beer commercials
or generations of Guitar Player magazine editors.
Rather, they descend with a terrible might, and though neither
band does much singing, it feels alarmingly like they might
just have something desperately important to say.
|
