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FUTURE DELIVERIES AND A NEW ARRIVAL
Last week, local bike dance-punkers Show Me the Pink were literally packed up and in the van, ready to move to Virginia as planned when drummer Zach Archibald called it off. He's on probation for graffiti until January and was hoping "to fall through the cracks." At the last minute, he decided "that is no way to be living when you have a wife and child [bandmate Noelle Archibald and daughter, Starlet]." >> Local hip-hop artist Soul Plasma is shortening his moniker to "Soul P." and signing to Sony's Christian rap imprint, Beatmart. The emcee has worked extensively with local producer/DJ/emcee Ohmega Watts and his latest release, The Soul Affect, featured appearances from Libretto and Toni Hill among others. Label head Todd Collins, who has produced Christian rock mainstays D.C. Talk and Audio Adrenaline, says that Soul P.'s record, slated for release in December, will be "the best Beatmart record to date." >> Merge Records has announced the release date of M. Ward's fourth album, Post War. Producer Mike Mogis (The Faint, Cursive) worked with Ward on the new album, due out Aug. 22. >> The Portland folk upstarts in John Weinland have finished their latest, Demersville. The band will play a release show at Mississippi Studios, July 14. >> Kristin Hersh, of Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave, has moved to Portland.
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Ships To Roam Thursday, May 25
J Blank sets down his electric bass and picks up the folk songwriter's plight.
[INDIE FOLK] J Blank, the man behind the folk-rock bandle Ships to Roam, is walking on treacherous ground with his debut, Funeral Songs and Lullabies. The musician has built his local music résumé playing bass with Portland bands like Woke Up Falling (melodramatic pop) and My Goldfish Ned (pop punk, of course). In both cases, Blank was part of a group that pushed emotion through the amplifier, swaying its listeners with sonics. Ships to Roam is entirely different, casting Blank as a folk musician who must count on his words to push and pull a crowd along. It's a scary proposition for a bass player, but one that Blank pulls off startingly well.
"No City Hill," like most of the album's nine tracks, is a bit more heavily produced than the average folk song, with Blank's crackling voice pushed about 20 feet behind the strumming acoustic guitar and then layered over itself. The result is an eerie creaker of a song that's so easy on the ears that seemingly meaningless lines like, "I am that stupid question/ So don't ask/ I do not care," invoke consideration rather than contempt (I imagine it would be the other way around on a Woke Up Falling album).
Sometimes it doesn't work, as on "Senseless," which features grinding guitars and an appropriately senseless key change that pushes the song into Alice in Chains territory. Not a horrible thing, but definitely not Blank's strong suit. For that, listen to "Picture Frame Nightmare," which uses the same chord progression as the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" as a backdrop for a sweet ode to Portland and its "dinosaur bridges." Or the hidden track, which features the infectious, simple chorus: "I don't/ Wanna/ Get a job." Over a basic strum, Blank sings, clear-throated, "You're lifeless lyin' in a pool of your own blood/ For a faceless faithless feelin'/ Or a really convincin' drug," and the effect is far more moving than anything a Marshall stack could produce.
—MARK BAUMGARTEN
Ships to Roam celebrates the release of Funeral Songs and Lullabies with Bryan Free, Alela Diane and Thread at Holocene. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Iame Friday, May 26
Local emcee has the beats to drive, but does he have the drive to beat?
[HIP-HOP] In his avant garde album-opening track, "Fog on the Shore," Sandpeople's Iame prefaces one of the most ambitious and tightly constructed Portland hip-hop releases in recent memory with a post-apocalyptic eulogy for Western Civilization. Behind him a firestorm of bowed bass, muted trumpet and distorted, boom-kick drums rages out of control, its ashes falling over the podium in the form of sweeping reverse keyboard loops. The emcee lets the fire burn awhile before explaining calmly, "Nearly all religions were connected/ But divided over time/ The divine was institutionalized somewhere along the line."
The 19 tracks on Noise Complaints are each battles in a larger war, one where guns and weed-smoke only confuse the fight. It's not a war fought between gangsters, emcees or b-boys, but an internal battle of good vs. evil vs. complacency. Complacency often comes out on top. "To change them habits/ Man there is nothing I'd like moreâ" Iame raps of his own indifference on "The Pauper vs. the Pompous," "But for every pacifist/ There is something to fight for."
Over the course of the album, Iame gives equal time to calls to arms against the tyrants who run the U.S. government, and to the depression and hopelessness he feels. "Fuck an anthem, just put one hand in the air, and ball it in a fist like you just do care," he rhymes on "An Anti-Anthem," before the Northwest depression catches him on "As I Walk Along," where his resignation reappears. "I need some time to think about shit/ Sink into the abyss," he says over neurotic scratching and sped-up, Kanye West-style soul samples.
While the beats on Noise Complaints are organic and often complex, the album gets a little long-winded. It would benefit from cutting about five tracks, though to Iame's credit, it would be hard to choose the omissions—there isn't an outright bad song on the whole album.
It's both ominous and appropriate that Iame ends his album with a sample of Nick Drake on "Day Is Done"; finding inspiration in the melancholy work of an artist who lost his battle with depression (Drake died of an overdose, an apparent suicide, at 26) helps Iame work through his. Hopefully the thrill of the battle will keep Iame around, engaged and making albums, for a long time to come.
—CASEY JARMAN
Iame's band, the Sandpeople, performs with 2 Heavens and Illmaculate at the Hawthorne Theater. 9 pm. $8 All ages.
The Thermals Saturday, May 27
Poppy punks come out of hibernation transformed.
[POP PUNK] For the past eight months, the Thermals have not played a show while they wrote and recorded the follow-up to 2004's Fuckin' A. That's a long time for a punk band to put together a record—were they making a concept album or something? Well, sort of, actually, as well as an album you're probably never going to hear. WW chatted with singer-guitarist Hutch Harris and bassist Kathy Foster about changes in the group, the album that never was and the fascist-Christian dystopia on The Body, the Blood, the Machine, which will be released by Sub Pop later this year.
—JASON SIMMS
WW: What brought on the departure of your original drummer, Jordan Hudson?
Hutch Harris: I'd rather not talk about it. We're such good friends, but it's really strained, and mostly out of respect for his feelings, I'd rather just not even talk about it.
Will he be in the audience at Saturday's show?
Harris: He's playing with Matt Ward [M. Ward] at the Beck show [Saturday night in Bend], but he was going to come. He used to play with Matt Ward years ago, so he's back with him.
Who've you got on skins now?
Foster: I played drums on the record, and we've been playing with Caitlin Love [from Desert City Soundtrack].
Can you tell me about the new album?
Harris: It's almost a concept record about a Christian fascist state.... It's not supposed to be a stand against anything, it's just that religion is interesting to write about—and terrifying. It's not a political record, it's just a paranoid fantasy.
Foster: I really like the lyrics; I think the lyrics and Hutch's voice are the most important instrument in this band.
Does it sound different, too?
Harris: We almost recorded a whole record with Jordan before this one. Last summer we went to Jackpot and we recorded seven or eight songs, and those were really different than the ones we did before. They were all minor and dark and slow and heavy. But then we just scrapped all of those.
Why?
Harris: We had worked on them with Jordan together, and it wasn't like the three of us were going to sit and mix all those and finish them out, so [we] just kind of set them aside.
The Thermals play with the Non-Stop Co-op Band and Yes Father at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
WWeek 2015