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[GOTH PUNK] Like so many of its peers in the increasingly crowded post-punk revival tent, Shadowhouse is an unabashed tomb raider. But the Portland quartet knows that you know retrospection is the name of the game. So the question posed by its debut album, Hand in Hand, is pretty straightforward: Does this batch of songs tweak your nostalgia knobs in ways that please you? If grandiose melancholy is your bag, the answer is yes. Hand in Hand splits the difference between the Cure's early monochrome masterpieces and the Chameleons' slightly rowdier odes to despair. And while the mannered signification occasionally devolves into mere mood music, Shadowhouse transcends its station with undeniable pop songwriting chops. Singer Shane McCauley's syrup-soaked baritone and the requisite waves of flange it rides on might seem borderline parodic on first spin. But for every stretch of funereal grief, Shadowhouse has antidotes waiting in its soaring choruses, which transform dourness into triumph as they deliver the strange thrill one might occasionally find at the end of a crying jag, when agony briefly becomes a secret power. And then you cry some more.
SEE IT: Shadowhouse plays the Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., with Lunch and Papal Order, on Sunday, Dec. 14. 8 pm. 21+.
WWeek 2015