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WE ARE NOT MODEST WITH OUR MICE HERE.
According to former Crackerbash frontman Sean Croghan, Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock did ask that the early-'90s Portland rock gods, who reunited for a MusicfestNW show in September (see WW, Sept. 7, 2005), open for the mighty Mouse on its next national tour. Croghan declined, telling WW, "We aren't a real band anymore" and citing "rugrats and wives, all that stuff that is very anti-rock." But he did leave open the possibility of a few shows, so keep em' crossed. * In other Mouse news, two somewhat reputable sources have reported that Johnny Marr, former guitarist for the Smiths, is currently living in Southeast Portland and helping Brock with the next Modest Mouse album. * Contrary to rumor, the Hunches have not been banned from the Crystal Ballroom. Despite the fact that the band tossed TV dinners and a glass bottle of vinegar into the crowd during a show last month, the Crystal's Jimi Biron says, "We don't typically 86 any artist, although re-booking would likely involve more discussion than normal to insure a situation wasn't repeated." The Hunches in booking negotiations—that's funny. * Last, but not least, Pitchfork reported Monday that the Decemberists have signed to major label Capitol Records. Indie purism be damned, we're right proud.
Holcombe Waller, Saturday, Dec. 17
Songwriter stands atop the rest, delivering healing balm for these times.
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] WW's recent shift to all-local-music coverage (except for, um, John Waters—see page 37) is a boon to the scene, for sure, but runs the risk of placing Portland musicians on a separate playing field, the classic "big fish/small pond" phenomenon. But of course, Stumptown's finest can more than hold their own against national acts, the Sleater-Shinny axis of indie-rock bands being only the most obvious example. Another lesser-known example is recent Portland transplant Holcombe Waller. Released earlier this year, his album Troubled Times combines lyrical smarts, melodic gifts and an impossibly empathic voice, resulting a miracle medicine for this troubled moment in our collective lives.
The album is a collaboration with Waller's longtime friend Ben Landsverk, who was musical director of Wade McCollum's celebrated musical, One, in which Waller took a leading role. The two met at Yale University in one of the college's famous a cappella vocal groups, the Duke's Men, and have worked together on various projects in the years since. Despite Waller's wish to eventually expand his and Landsverk's duo performances into a full band, the only "Unicorns" onstage tonight will be of the mythological variety. Still, with both Waller and Landsverk being classically trained pianists as well as natural talents on a variety of string instruments, and with their soul-bound harmonies the product of years of musical kinship, the duo is more than sufficient.
Other than the One run, you can count Waller's local gigs since his move here on one hand. Indeed, this hometown show is not a stand-alone, but comes at the end of a month spent touring the metropolises to the east (Chicago, Boston, Philly and NYC) and south (L.A., S.F., the latter Waller's previous hometown). In addition to the masterful Troubled Times material, tonight's performance will feature songs from the pair's forthcoming follow-up. The new material is notably more direct and plainspoken than the labyrinthine approach of Times, featuring the tender "Little Goat" and a moving meditation on marriage, "Into the Dark Unknown."
So, in closing, let me make this clear: Holcombe Waller's Troubled Times ain't my favorite local album of 2005; it's the best new music I've heard all year, period. JEFF ROSENBERG. Holcombe Waller plays with Sexton Blake and Susie Blue at the Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
Junior Private Detective Sunday, Dec. 18
A pop quartet made up of able musicians, not axe murderers.
[POP] Three years ago, the members of Junior Private Detective relocated from all over the country to live and rock together in Portland, which is not unique. What is unique, though, is that the bandmates met for the first time while attending an audio engineering workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio, and then moved to Portland two weeks later—a risky endeavor for sure.
"It seems crazy now," says guitarist Bo Fickel. "Emilie [Strange, vocals-keyboards] could have been an axe murderer, for all I knew."
Once they settled in Portland, JPD found inspiration at home, having landed in the house that was once home to Laundry Rules Studios, where Elliott Smith and Cat Power had recorded some of their early, influential albums. The band then went to the house's former resident, Larry Crane (who produced Smith at Laundry Rules and currently owns Jackpot Studios and Tape Op magazine) to record the band's first full-length, Square. The album is a stripped-down, shoegazer-cum-indie pop album with some odd time signatures and chugga-chugga guitar thrown in to confuse music critics. While the album showcases the band's musical complexity, Strange's vocals are single-tracked and often stiff, and the band is hindered by a desire to stick with a sound it could easily recapture live.
JPD's latest effort, Erase, throws those restraints out the window. "We've come around to the school of thought that the live show is the live show," Fickel says, "and it comes off pretty good." The record comes off pretty good, too, as producer Skyler Norwood (Talkdemonic; Point Juncture, WA) layers instrumentation and rich vocal harmonies across the stereo spectrum. On "Ctrl+Z" Fickel's guitar spirals and then swirls from left to right, while the band shifts effortlessly from atmospheric instrumentals in various time signatures to straight-ahead rock.
The reverb-drenched "Aftermath" is one of Erase's strongest tracks, where hazy surf-style guitars complement Strange's haunting vocals, in which she wishes the apocalypse into reality: "I knew my teachers would postpone my homework/ now that the world was in disarray."
Strange's vocals are vastly improved from Square, and her self-harmonizing is moving and pitch-perfect. Her lyrics, however, are sometimes too conversational. Such sweeping, epic music demands equally epic words—a challenge Strange proves she is up to on lyrically complex tracks such as "Time Like Television." At its worst moments, this incongruity breaks Erase's verisimilitude. At its worst moments, though, Erase is still a solid album. CASEY JARMAN. Junior Private Detective plays with Heroes and Villains and Drats!!! at Berbati's Pan. 9:30 pm. Free. 21+.
Point Juncture, WA; Kind of Like Spitting; Norfolk & Western Dec. 9 at Wonder Ballroom
Kind of Like Spitting plays the middle child in a family of Portland's best.
[INDIE ROCK] Portland is a town full of outsiders, but within its closely knit indie-rock scene, love is the tie that binds. All it took was a casual glance around the Wonder Ballroom Friday night to see a slew of Portland's indie-rock heavy hitters, from Norfolk & Western (and ex-Decemberist) drummer Rachel Blumberg giving current Decemberist Chris Funk a hug, to Hush Records founder Chad Crouch, the Thermal's Hutch Harris and Lucky Madison's Ryan Feigh. The crowd was a mix of friends, colleagues and fans that, at a show like this, are really all one and the same.
You would think the Wonder would've been more than half-full with fans for this triple shot of indie rock, given that all the acceptance and support surrounding the bands at Point Juncture, WA's CD release show could've burst the Wonder at its rafters: Even an outsider could see that.
The audience at the 762-capacity ballroom did thicken as Point Juncture, WA's set of melodically layered, vibraphone-laden rock approached, but the attendees of Kind of Like Spitting's set, though fewer, were committed, banging their heads at the foot of the stage and enthusiastically yelling for early KOLS songs like "March 25, 1998" from KOLS' 2001 self-titled reissue.
Besides KOLS's Ben Barnett humbly repeating "Show starts now" after the first few songs—as if the band had been only warming up—he and his full band plunged into the heavier tunes like "We Fell All Over You" and "Bubble Congress" from Barnett's latest, In the Red, with a confident fervor that belied the relatively small audience. The din of the crowd coming from the far-off balcony was apparent when the sweaty-as-fuck, spastic Barnett did slow it down and veer into ballad territory, but when you put a group of peers in (basically) a high-school gym, cliques will form and chit-chat will ensue.
On "Worker Bee #7438-F87904" from In the Red, Barnett claims, "I sing myself raw every night." The most notable thing about KOLS live is that, instead of coming off like a melodramatic crybaby, Barnett's performance reinforces the notion that he does put every last bit of himself into his music, that every honest, biting word he sings is the truth. It's the conviction of a songwriter like Barnett that builds community and respect within a scene. Whether fan or friend (or both), you are convinced: This guy is the real deal.
Perhaps Barnett's "Afraid of Crushes" put it best: "I can't believe that I'm here/ I can't believe that you'd care." And caring, Portland, is the catalyst. It's how we can all become insiders. AMY MCCULLOUGH.
A John Waters Christmas Friday, Dec. 16
The trash filmmaker may well be our holiday savior.
[SPOKEN WORD] When you stop and really think about it, in his own unique way, John Waters, much like Jesus Christ, is a savior. Christ saved us from the sin. Waters saved us from the mundane banality that comes in the absence of sin.
And appropriately enough, Waters, the filmmaker from Baltimore who made a star out of a transvestite named Divine (who in turn earned infamy for devouring a dog turd in Waters' 1972 movie Pink Flamingos) celebrates the Christmas season in his own special way. The man behind Hairspray has a new, spoken-word, one man show, A John Waters Christmas.
Portland—which Waters described in a recent interview with WW as a "good place to blend in if you had a bad left-wing past you're trying to escape"—is one of seven cities that will get a special present under the tree when the filmmaker brings his trashy memory- and special-secret-guest-filled show to town this week, invading Dante's Friday night.
Even without the show or the Christmas album of the same name he released last year (a collection of offbeat holiday tunes that includes classics like "Santa Claus Is a Black Man" and "Here Comes Fatty Claus"), Waters' love of the season is apparent—especially the parties and presents.
He talks fondly about the gifts his fans have given him over the years, including an oil portrait of Don Knotts and another oil painting depicting the wallpaper from the apartment of Dawn Davenport (Divine's character in 1974's Female Trouble). A slightly less welcome gift is food prepared by his fans. "Annie Liebowitz told me...never eat food that fans give you, because they could poison you," he says. "I was at a book-signing recently and my niece was there, and I got this beautiful big thing of homemade fudge, and I said, 'Oh, I can't eat this.' She said, 'Oh Uncle John...' So I said, 'You test it.' It was like Guyana. She took a bite of candy, and I waited 15 minutes before I ate a piece." DAVID WALKER. The comedy special A John Waters Christmas kicks off with a 7 pm dinner and meet-and-greet Friday, Dec. 16, at Dante's, 1 SW 3rd Ave., 226-6630. 9 pm performance. Dinner and show $50 advance, show only $25 advance, $30 door. 21+.
Pambrosia Pepe and the Bottle Blondes (Geisha Boy)
Pepe's Latin flavor only gets better with age.
[LATIN] Five years have passed since Pepe and the Bottle Blondes issued their last album, Latenight Betty. That's enough time to forget how Pepe, the flamboyant, cheeky crooner, used his voice to express a driving urgency, one that can get your hips to rotate and your libido to levitate. Now the Madrid native and his band have returned to turn up the heat, releasing a new recording, Pambrosia, which evokes a Latin-influenced robustness, nutty flavors and a hint of melodrama. Pambrosia is an effervescent, eclectic mix of songs in the styles of calypso, salsa, cha-cha, tango, danzon (a slow mambo) and a smattering of techno.
The album kicks off with "Outta This World," a wonderfully silly piece about an alien who free-falls to earth, spends time with Pepe and becomes acclimated to big-mouth Mickeys, car alarms and Mariah Carey tunes before he has to return to his planet. Pepe follows this number with the uptempo "Desmayarse" ("To Faint"), a salsa-inspired setting for a poem by Spanish playwright Lope de Vega (1562-1635). The album also contains renditions of Cuban standards, such as the light and fluffy "Bonito y Sabroso" ("Pretty and Tasty"), sung by Jessica Hollyfield, one of the Bottle Blondes, and "Donde Estabas Tu" ("Where Were You") sung by Nadine Stanton, the other blonde. Tight ensemble playing by Ken Olis and Reinhardt Meltz on percussion, Sid Boss on piano, Justin Durrie on bass, Lars Campbell on trombone and Lewis Livermore on trumpet sparkles with each number. With Pambrosia, Pepe and company aren't just shaking a couple of maracas; instead, they are placing themselves at the front of Portland's nouveau Latin music scene. JAMES BASH. Pepe and the Bottle Blondes play Wednesday, Dec. 14, at a taping of the radio show Live Wire! at the Aladdin Theater. 7 pm. $10. All ages. They have a CD release show Friday, Dec. 16, at Wonder Ballroom. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.
Holcombe Waller plays with Sexton Blake and Susie Blue at the Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
Junior Private Detective plays with Heroes and Villains and Drats!!! at Berbati's Pan. 9:30 pm. Free. 21+.
The comedy special A John Waters Christmas kicks off with a 7 pm dinner and meet-and-greet Friday, Dec. 16, at Dante's, 1 SW 3rd Ave., 226-6630. 9 pm performance. Dinner and show $50 advance, show only $25 advance, $30 door. 21+.
Pepe and the Bottle Blondes play Wednesday, Dec. 14, at a taping of the radio show Live Wire! at the Aladdin Theater. 7 pm. $10. All ages. They have a CD release show Friday, Dec. 16, at Wonder Ballroom. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.
WWeek 2015