[VOCAL POP] Two years ago, I was pretty excited about the
Alialujah Choir. A supergroup of sorts featuring Weinland’s Adam Shearer
and Alia Farah alongside Norfolk & Western frontman Adam Selzer,
the group’s debut show was rich with gorgeous vocal harmonies and
soft-but-twisting musical arrangements usually associated with
old-school groups like CSNY or the Hollies. But then, as so many new
bands do, this one evaporated into its members’ busy schedules before
the Alialujah Choir ever had a chance to take Portland by quiet storm.
So this debut album
is the rare one that wholly deserves its “long-awaited” status. (The
band’s return show will have to wait a little longer, unfortunately, due
to a death in the family.) This is one of the prettiest albums to come
out of Portland since A Weather—a point driven home by lyrically
abstract, A Weatherish tunes like opener “Laundry Song” (which also
sounds a bit like a sedated version of the Mamas and the Papas’
“California Dreamin’”) and the lovely, whisper-soft closer “Really
Home.”
The Northwest has
plenty of sweet-sounding folk-pop bands without much to say, but
Alialujah Choir has got the full package: With these talents it’s no
surprise the songs are melodically engaging (nor that they are
brilliantly produced in Selzer’s capable hands), but the excellent
lyricism is a bit surprising. Songs written by committee often resort to
cliché, but from the concise lyrical violence of “Bones Cracking In” to
the mysterious and haunting “Closer Than I Should,” these songs
function almost as well as mysterious short stories as they do as songs.
In other words,
Alialujah Choir is the best possible kind of supergroup. Here’s hoping
we see more of the band in the next two years than we have in the last
two.
SEE IT: Black Pussy plays the Ash Street Saloon,
225 SW Ash St., on Saturday, Feb. 11. 8 pm. $5. 21+. Alialjuah Choir’s
debut disc is out Tuesday, Feb. 14.
