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8 Pm
Fences
[MOST PLEASANT] Is there anything silkier than the marriage of meandering acoustic guitar and patient piano playing? Add the Conor Oberst-esque vocals of Christopher Mansfield and you have Seattle's Fences. The outfit's soft and unplugged sound manages to come off as extremely authoritative, even eminent. It crafts brooding, stormy landscapes out of the simplest of arrangements. Gentle repetition has a way of swaying one into helpless dependence. It's hypnotic and wholesome. Give in. MARK STOCK. BERBATI'S.
9 Pm
Portland Cello Project
[CELLICIOUS] No one knows exactly why Portland has attracted a critical mass of broad-minded, classically trained—are there any other kind?—cellisti, but many of them have converged around Doug Jenkins, whose PCP has garnered national attention for his inventive, multi-cello arrangements of everything from Beethoven to Britney to Led Zeppelin to today's hottest local bands. Having recorded two fine albums, collaborated with much of the city's indie-rock royalty and drawn sizable young audiences to its own concerts, PCP is making cellos cool. BRETT CAMPBELL. BERBATI'S.
10 Pm
Damien Jurado
[CARVER LOT] From earliest days hawking lo-fi field recordings around Seattle, singer-songwriter Damien Jurado's developed a sterling reputation for setting melancholic narratives to affecting melodies with rare consistency. His latest album, Caught in the Trees, once again features Jurado's touring mates, Jenna Conrad and Eric Fisher, sugaring his spare orchestration and restrained vocals. It's another collection of chillingly detailed elegies of crumbling affairs and overmedicated confusion lovingly rendered with a tuneful, masculine sentimentality. JAY HORTON. BERBATI'S.
11 Pm
Will Sheff
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] It's fitting that Will Sheff's best song, "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe," opens not with his voice but with the click and hum of an old film projector. Sheff is the lanky boy with a guitar at the front of Okkervil River, one of the wordiest bands of the aughts. But where many lyricists often dwell on mundane personal details or elaborate fits of storytelling fancy, Sheff grounds his songs—tales that are malleable, alive and kicking—in both fiction and nonfiction. It's a tactic that's easily digestible when listening to his music, both with Okkervil River and especially on his own, and the trick that makes his songs the best motion picture soundtrack to anyone who's ever had their heart broken. Sheff often combines his astute wordplay with deft and clever arrangements, creating songs that are just as much fun to read as they are to listen to. Stripped of the band's pomp, Sheff is left naked and vulnerable—which, though uncomfortable at first, is the perfect place for someone who is a songwriter more than a songmaker. "Plus Ones," from 2007's The Stage Names, almost sounds better deconstructed and without the studio recordings' watery organ and crunchy electric guitar chords. Sheff casually tosses off a list of some of the most memorable numbers in popular music ("99 Luftballons," "7 Chinese Brothers," "TVC 15"), but it's the last lines of the first verse that really distill his mission statement: "I am all out of love to mouth into your ear/ And not above letting a love song disappear before it's written." Okkervil River's appeal is that it writes love songs that deal with what it's actually like to be in love. Sheff spills his heart onto the page and into every performance, shouting until his voice is hoarse and his fingers numb from strumming his ax so incessantly. It's a thrill, for sure. Just don't forget to bring the popcorn. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. BERBATI'S.
WWeek 2015