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Portland’s Bory has become enough of a power-pop juggernaut that it’s easy to forget it’s the first songwriting project for its frontman, a reserved and soft-spoken 31-year-old named Brenden Ramirez.
“On the first album, I was still feeling out being a songwriter and allowing myself to call myself a songwriter,” he says. “On this one, I felt like I had to prove to myself that the first one wasn’t a fluke, and that I could decide to write another album if I wanted to.”
Released earlier this month through Bleak Enterprise and funded in part by a grant from the MusicOregon Echo Fund in 2014, Never Turns to Night is Ramirez’s second album under the Bory name, and it’s a leap in growth and confidence from his previous effort, Who’s a Good Boy. That album was strewn with fuzz, feedback and distortion, sometimes edging out Ramirez’s vocals. Never Turns to Night is a folkier, more baroque-pop affair that often recalls another shy but talented Portland kid: Elliott Smith.
“I put a big emphasis on making the songs tighter,” Ramirez says. “I felt like I was able to write songs with fewer loose ends this time around.”
Ramirez describes himself as a nonconfrontational person, and Never Turns to Night explores these tendencies, most potently on “We’ll Burn That Bridge When We Get to It,” which opens the 25-minute set.
“Maybe I’m able to fully process or explore things more easily in a song than if I was talking to someone, which I don’t think is something I’m necessarily proud of,” he says. “It’s the easiest way to actually say things.”
Ramirez’s combination of self-effacing songwriting and big, jubilant, post-Beatles pop hooks aligns him with the vaporous movement known as power pop., It’s a loose term with shifting definitions, often referring to bands that take the template of the ’60s British Invasion and turn up both the volume and the heartbreak.
“I never set out to make a power-pop album,” Ramirez says, “but it ended up being a pretty convenient and accurate way to describe the music.”
Even from the considerable technical dexterity on display on Bory’s two records, you might never guess Ramirez’s musical roots. Born in Orange County, Calif., Ramirez started out as a student of jazz guitar, and he first journeyed north to Oregon to study music at Willamette University.
Yet Ramirez says he was never especially good at jazz, nor does he have much interest in picking it up again. “I’ll never say that my experiences didn’t play a part in whatever I’m making now,” he says. “But I definitely don’t want to come off as a jazz guy. I saw an article that said after I had ‘mastered the art of jazz,’ I moved on to power pop or something like that. And I was like, ‘Oh no, this is getting out of hand.’”
Instead, Never Turns to Night gets its fire from Ramirez’s fellow musicians in the West Coast touring ecosystem. A major inspiration for its style—including its severe length, 10 songs in 25 minutes—is Tony Molina, the Bay Area cult hero and creator of bite-sized pop songs, with whom Ramirez toured during a stint in Troper’s band.
“He seems like the kind of guy who can just have a song written in their head,” Ramirez says of Molina. “I know a lot of people like that. Blue [Broderick] from Diners is like that.”
While the previous Bory album was mostly a two-hander between Ramirez and multi-instrumentalist/producer Mo Troper, Never Turns to Night features Sonia Weber, best known for leading local guitar shredders Alien Boy, on drums. Weber also plays with the live Bory band alongside Ramirez, bassist Evan Mersky and guitarist Joseph Berman.
The band will perform to celebrate the release of Never Turns to Night on April 23 at the Show Bar at Revolution Hall, with support from the Cherry Peels and Withholden.
“I’ve played with a lot of great musicians and songwriters, and I’ve just tried to be a sponge now and absorb everything,” Ramirez says. “I’m so lucky to be around so many people who inspire me.”
