Skip to main content[INDUSTRIAL BLUES] There are voices that kill: Maybe you've died a little bit listening to Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart or Ian Curtis (Joy Division). There are voices that romance: Perhaps you've swooned to Jamie Lidell or Jarvis Cocker. And there are voices that fall somewhere in between, voices that displace. Rex Marshall, the gentleman behind the Mattress moniker, has just such a voice.
Then there's music that borrows: Maybe you've never really touched blues, for instance, just heard snippets of old forms through the White Stripes, the Black Keys or something of the like. Everything, in some way, is a revival, a repetition or a sly acknowledgement. Put Mattress in the latter, if anywhere; it's in Marshall's voice—a dark, dust-encased old-bluesman baritone—that such acknowledgment exists. And it's more than an affectation: Even our brief telephone exchange sounded like it occurred over a span of 50 years and an entire continent.
This voice was originally part of a duo called the Coupons, a since abandoned blues-rock project. Yet, before its death, Marshall fired off a handwritten letter and demo CD to James Squeaky, the furry head behind Argumentix and its many collaborations as well as BelowPDX Records—a label that, until Mattress, existed primarily to release Squeaky's own music. Squeaky wasn't terribly interested, but offered the Coupons a gig. The Coupons were eventually forced to decline, Squeaky says, due to "something about the drummer being embarrassed about being in the band." But, the same night, Marshall gave Squeaky a demo by his other project, Wheelchair, which (out of respect to the wheelchaired) was later renamed Mattress.
Marshall's voice is hardly preparation for the music of Mattress, which is as alien as it is mechanical. His primary release, Eldorado—the other is a limited-availability, cassette-only recording—sounds like the lost soundtrack to the amnesia-ridden, desert-set film Paris, Texas. The metronomic, primitive beats, crude vocoders and synths seem to be at war with Marshall's vocals and reckless guitar.
But, as it turns out, the battle is a win for both sides. Marshall has a show booked nearly every week alongside his Portland experimental/noise peers. And, within that community, it's refreshing and rare to hear such a solid, clear voice, however displaced it may be.
Mattress plays with Mastema Wasp Trio, Argumentix and Joe von Appen Wednesday, Jan. 24, at Acme. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
WWeek 2015