Skip to main content[BIG BAND] Capturing Typhoon's epic live presence on record would seem an impossible task. In person, the Portland collective is both joyful and dark, subtle and—with around 10 members at most shows—entirely overwhelming in its explosiveness. Between the sweat and the choir—everyone in the band sings—Typhoon shows can feel like I'd imagine church feels for religious people. It's soul-stirring. It would seem to be an experience that no compact disc or vinyl record could hold. And none has, until Hunger and Thirst.
This is apparent from the start, when 10 seconds of shaker introduces "Starting Over (Bad Habits)." Sparse, queasy stabs of electric guitar and jug-band percussion follow suit. "I've started a new beginning," frontman Kyle Morton opens. "Suspiciously like the old one—only this time I'm ready." These are words every Typhoon fan (and the band has made lots of them in a five-year journey that brought them up I-5 from Salem to Portland) wants to hear. After lineup changes and hiatuses, this band is at full force. Cue the choir. Cue the horns. Cue the strings. Let it all blast.
But that's where Typhoon throws us a curve: Hunger and Thirst shows a great deal of compositional restraint. Tracks like the soulful, choir-driven "Ghost Train" and the spooky "Old Haunts, New Cities" play on their listener's anticipation of the muscular blasts befitting of Typhoon's name, but pay off in small, intoxicating doses. This evidences the band's growth, and makes Typhoon's most intense musical punctuations (the stomping blues of "Mouth of the Cave" and the metal riffage of the ensuing "Belly of the Cavern") all the more striking.
If the band has grown in leaps and bounds, so has Morton's songwriting. Always an empathetic writer, he's never been so eloquent as on "CPR/Claws Part 2," a gutwrenching ballad of an elderly widow or widower living his or her final days alone. "It's quiet and you wait," he sings. "You make the bed for two you've always made." Horns sweep gently into the pulsing track. "As long as you're waiting/ Since you have nothing to do with your hands/ You might as well pray," Morton suggests, before turning inward. "I am no God-fearing man/ But I am afraid/ Of something that I cannot quite explain." Cue the choir. Cue the strings. Cue the best local album of 2010 thus far.
Typhoon plays Saturday, May 1, at Backspace. 6 pm. $5. All ages. Later that night, Typhoon plays at the Someday Lounge. 9 pm. $7. 21+. See listings for details.
WWeek 2015