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BOGARTING PORTLAND'S MUSIC NEWS.
The recent High Violets CD-release show at Doug Fir inspired more than the use of heavy psychedelics. The psych poppers also helped birth a bizarre review from writer Roger Neville-Neil written in Film Noir style. Weird, but cool. Check the story out at www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue33/action15.html. >> The latest effort to bridge the gap between the Pac Northwest's two greatest burgs comes in the form of Pdxport. The organization, spearheaded by Heroes & Villains drummer Scott Magee, plans to set up one to three shows each month in Seattle in hopes of breaking the barrier on our Northern neighbor's secluded music scene. Go to www.myspace.com/pdxport for more info. >> We have good news and bad news for you, musician-type. The good new is that PDX Pop Now! has extended the submission deadline for its third-annual compilation CD. The bad news is that you've only got two more days to submit your work: the deadline is now April 14. Go to www.pdxpopnow.com for more information. >> Portland's own hip-hop fave Ohmega Watts has recently been added to the Lollapalooza lineup. The 2-day festival takes place in Chicago this summer and will showcase acts including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West and Sonic Youth.
Sate our thirst for Portland music news. Email localcut@wweek.com.
Quasi Friday, April 14
How rhyme and reason transformed Sam Coomes' politics.
[INDIE ROCK] There's a reason that Quasi receives a hell of a lot of attention, and it's not because it's the hottest shit around. The duo of Sam Coomes (Blues Goblin) and Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney) has been around for 10 years, and bands that exist for that long aren't hot. They're interesting. Like Quasi, a band that manages to keep fans guessing while delivering gut-punch songs tethered to a sonic dissonance and lyrical honesty. When the Going Gets Dark, the band's seventh release, is filled with pulsing distortion, meandering rock instrumentals and plenty of politics. WW spoke to Coomes about some interesting shit. MARK BAUMGARTEN.
WW: This album, as well as Hot Shit, is, in its lyricism, quite a departure from Quasi's earlier releases. What changed?
Sam Coomes: Mostly, I guess for me, the big thing was the birth of my daughter and sort of the massive changes in mental function and just nuts-and-bolts life processes that that entails.
I would have imagined that the shift occurred more because of national politics.
I think the two probably attenuate each other. The political situation deteriorated, and as a father, I could no longer afford to say, "Well, I've had a good life, I don't give a shit."
In "When the Going Gets Dark," you sing, "I'll be Joan of Arc / When the going gets dark." That's a very powerful figure to invoke. Was that a character you wanted to work into the song, or is she there only because of the rhyme?
The reason why I like to write with rhyme is that, in the interest of trying to get a rhyme, I discover meanings I wouldn't necessarily have thought of had I just been writing it out in prose. So, I don't think I actually thought I wanted to write a song about Joan of Arc. It's just this piece of music that seemed to be about a certain thing and that seemed to fit into it.
What's the purpose of couching your songs in clattering moments of dissonance?
Mostly, again, it's just a feeling thing. You know, "Alice the Goon," specifically, I just started pounding on the piano with my fist, not even hitting specific notes, just generating a rhythm that way, and it just sounded great to me. (laughs) I don't have a very intellectual approach to my thing. I just start in doing it, and whatever feels good, I just go with that.
Quasi plays with the Minders and Pan Tourismos at the Wonder Ballroom. 8 pm. $10 advance. All ages.
Nick Jaina & Friends April 6 at Acme
Portland's indie-folk acts are cool, but apparently Acme's patrons are cooler.
[INDIE FOLK] A thick crowd of greasy-haired hipsters got a healthy dose of indie folk from some of Portland's finer singer-songwriters last Thursday at Acme, but I'd be surprise if they knew it. The super-chatty crowd was presumably there to listen to Dragging an Ox through Water, Tractor Operator and Nick Jaina, but since it seems they could have used an even healthier dose of "Shut the fuck up!", I'll go ahead and recap the show for those of us who care.
Dragging an Ox through Water (aka Brian Mumford) started out the evening with a set of noisy folk-pop. He occasionally looped a clunky guitar part in the background, building a haze of discordant sound that could've turned into something amazing but often fell flat. Mumford's saving grace is that he's got an amazing voice that embodies all the mellow-drama of Morrissey while maintaining a richness and depth all its own. I can't help but think that I'd rather just hear him sing and play an acoustic guitar. I know the fuzzy, lo-fi thing is part of his sound, but a beautiful song like "Bowl of Salt" begs for simplicity, and Mumford often drowns his best work in its own juices.
The fucking-amazing Eric Jensen (aka Tractor Operator) took the stage next, with the bar clatter at an all-time, irritating high density. Though Jensen was unable to cut through it at times, I still honestly believe that, with a full band and some time, Jensen could become the next Isaac Brock (and I couldn't say that lightly). It's his "Yeah, everyone's family is fucked up, but listen to this" songs (namely, "The Last Sunday in November") that beg for comparison. But despite the similarities, songs like his don't-give-a-fuck anthem "Two Dead Cats" and heart-wrenching ballads of true, twisted romance like "Close the Door" (to be released on a 7-inch in May) are the songwriter's own. When he commenced the hard strumming during a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's "King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1" last Thursday, you actually couldn't hear the din of Portland's hipsterati anymore, which is amazing in itself.
Finally, Nick Jaina (of the Binary Dolls) took to the stage accompanied by a collection of P-town indie-rock all-stars—members of Horse Feathers, Heroes & Villains and Point Juncture, WA. While Jaina and band came close to transcendence a few times, it was after he announced the end of his set that his best performance surfaced. At the cries of a few devotees, Jaina played "Dirty Heart," a sad, moral attack filled with high, twinkling guitar and punctuated by perfect "la-da-dahs." Performed solo on acoustic guitar, it served as a poignant testament to the feeling of honesty that a performer, armed with a great song, can translate to his audience—if they're listening. AMY MCCULLOUGH.
The Plants Sunday, April 16
Portland's ground might not be fertile for neo-folk, but the Plants manage to grow.
[DRONE FOLK] The recent neo-folk movement is so fraught with irony and paradox it's trippy just pondering it. Filled with exhortations of wilderness, spirituality and fantasy, the music seems born of Vermont hippie communes or Ozark cave lairs. So why is it coming forth from cities, the "thickening centers" of pollution and dead gods?
Josh Blanchard of Portland psych-folk duo the Plants is the one to ask. After a two-week stint in the glass-and-rebar heart of the genre's explosion, New York, frontman Blanchard and bandmate Molly Griffith have returned, he tells Willamette Week, "to the wide open spaces of sweet home Oregon." Here the band remains a neo-folk anomaly in a crowded field of ambient psych bands and rock 'n' roll, but in New York the band is comfortable beside groups like Animal Collective, Espers and Akron/Family, which seem to burst forth from the pavement. Blanchard says that the odd pairing comes from the idea of the music as "an escape, a temporary portal to the mountains and forests that seem almost mythical to [the city's residents]." Blanchard knows a thing about the ability of music to transport. In addition to the Plants, Blanchard curates the Church of Psychedelia, Holocene's monthly showcase of all things musically transcendent. Indeed, he seems in both music and conversation to be intensely in tune with spirituality.
The Plants' debut, The Mind Is a Bird in the Hand, sprouted from an odd soil, empty of influence from Portland's folk scene, and more in concert with the brooding essence of Blanchard's former dance-noise outfit Point Line Plane, a distinctly chaotic and urban project. On the album, Blanchard's spirituality is most present in his vocals, a chilling plainsong flecked with liturgical intonations, particularly on "The Cage." That voice is tied to haunting music—irregular guitar reverberations, simple melodies and Griffith's deep blue cello. The music is all so drowsily paced that it feels as though every measure could contain its own song, particularly on the death march of "Acorn Child." For much of the disc, we're left with a hookless folk drone (save for "Invisible Islands," which conjures the '60s psych of "Turn! Turn! Turn!") too tied to rhythm to lift it into the ambience of Portland peers World or In Gowan Ring, yet testing in its yawning plains of sound. These vast, gorgeous spaces exist independent of locale or musical trend, placing the Plants in a Portland of their own. MICHAEL BYRNE.
The Plants play with In Gowan Ring and Nick Castro at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Threesome Hot Portland Singles
The Kingsmen, "Little Latin Lupe Lu"
Upon its release in 1963, the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie" was misheard by some folks who accused the Portland group of singing inappropriately sexual lyrics. But listeners really slept on "Little Latin Lupe Lu," wherein the legendary dirty birds praised their "mashed potato baby," bragging that "there ain't no dance she couldn't do," while smutty distorted guitar and shamelessly gyrating tambourines soiled the musical bedsheets. I'm pretty sure that by "dance" they mean sexual maneuvers, and by "mashed potato baby" they mean...well, I'm still working that part out. I'm pretty sure it's really filthy. CASEY JARMAN
Bright Red Paper, "D Is for Dead Sea," from self-titled album
Funny how a little orientalism can save a song. The Middle Eastern-tinged melody that opens Bright Red Paper's instrumental "D Is for Dead Sea" rescues the track from being little more than a guilty chamber-core pleasure. Generally, the band's self-titled first album is just that, a (grand) marriage of the basic chamber-string orchestration of early Rachels with the easy musical drama of Explosions in the Sky—i.e., oversize climaxes and minor-key downshifting. Bright Red Paper has done well in giving the listener a setting for this drama, a tragic reference point that couldn't be more apt. MICHAEL BYRNE.
Clorox Girls, "Das Ist Nicht Meine Stadt," from the Austrian 7-inch
A lot of Portland's more DIY-inclined bands are significantly more popular in Europe than stateside. Case in point: The Clorox Girls not only recently recorded a pair of 7-inches for their European tour (with no plans for release in the U.S.), but they also recorded their song "Not My Hometown" in German. The best moment in "Das Ist Nicht Meine Stadt" is the line in the breakdown, "I wanna fuck in the streets," which sounds pretty square when loosely translated as "Ich will sex auf der Strasse," once again proving that, although they may have better taste in punk, Germans are dorks. Screw you, new-Clorox Girls'-7-inch-getting bastards. JASON SIMMS.
The Beauty Friday, April 14
A colorful crew of Portland musicians marry soulful odes to binary code.
[GLITCH SOUL] The Horse Brass Pub on Southeast 45th Avenue and Belmont Street gets pretty loud. I can hear three distinct strands of conversation in my taped interview with Portland's new glitch-soul outfit, the Beauty. The voices that stand out of the chatter first are those of Todd Fadel (former owner of Meow Meow) and Matt Zimmerman, the scratchy-voiced electro-punk crooners who founded the group. Later, they are joined by JR Pella of the legendary heyday Portland soul-rock outfit Drunk at Abi's, the award-winning beatboxer Fogatron, and laptop whiz kid Mark Weingarten. This evening marks the first time all of these musicians, who will perform together at the Doug Fir on Friday, have ever met. Here is some of the chatter I captured. CASEY JARMAN.
Matt Weingarten: Usually when you have two white guys doing soul music it winds up being all those clichés. It's either tongue-in-cheek or really serious, and we didn't want to do either one.
Todd Fadel: At one point during practice today, Fogatron was doing this robot voice, and we all started doing robot sounds. We were totally embracing how ridiculous it was, but also adding our souls and personalities to it.
Fogatron: For me, this is a pivotal show. Every show that I've ever done, I've said, "My name is Fogatron and I don't use any effects." People think that I'm using effects, which is the biggest compliment I can ever get.
JR Pella: Soul music is a live process. Like with all music, you can wrap it up in a bow, but I think what you guys want to do is keep it immediate and organic. The electronic stuff just makes it unique.
Fadel: Inherent to the whole thing is that we're not just sitting around and checking our email [during performances], which is what a lot of laptop musicians are accused of—being devoid of the spiritual quality of the performance. What Mark adds to it is every bit as organic.
Weingarten: It's awesome for me, because for the last few years I've had the vague idea of incorporating laptop with something live. I've done it with guitars and drums, but it's especially unique with vocals. It's just really fun to mess with words. The Beauty plays with Jamie Lidell and Jimmy Edgar at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $12 advance, $13 day of show.
Quasi plays with the Minders and Pan Tourismos at the Wonder Ballroom. 8 pm. $10 advance. All ages.
The Plants play with In Gowan Ring and Nick Castro at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
The Beauty plays with Jamie Lidell and Jimmy Edgar at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $12 advance, $13 day of show.
WWeek 2015