Skip to main content[GARAGE ROCK] Don't fault the Wires for not having a sense of humor. At Billy Ray's last month, the local four-piece withstood a barrage of good-natured heckling inspired by their near-namesakes, classic British punk band Wire. At one point between songs, someone in the audience of 20 or so jaded drunks shouted, 'When's your album Pink Flags coming out?' cleverly pluralizing a Wire album title (that's rock-geek funny!). Then another clown chimed in with a request for a Wire song, '1 2 X U.' And so it went.
For a moment, the Wires looked mildly irritated—house parties, they will tell you, are more their thing. Then, with a gravel-choked howl and a raggedy-ass guitar slash, frontman Jordon Barron signaled the band's return to shadowy, primal rock 'n' roll. David Hires laid in with a hypno-primitive drum beat while Jake Thomas covered the bottom with a thick, hip-shaking bass groove. Though Barron, with a stage presence that suggests Nick Cave channeling Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash, is clearly the focus of attention, the devil in this music is found dancing in the down-beat accentuated by his partner, Laine Shipley, on tambourine.
The smartasses were duly silenced by a band that Dead Moon bassist Toody Cole named as her favorite young, local band in a WW interview shortly after the Wires opened for the Clackamas legends in Seattle, one of almost 70 shows the young band has played in the past year. In 20 minutes of coffee-shop conversation last week, the band name-checked Dead Moon as an inspiration four times. And, in addition to an ear for the moodier turns of Portland greats the Wipers, the Wires certainly have a direct line on DM frontman Fred Cole's famously raw and unpolished approach to vital music. 'The whole garage-rock thing to me is about going out there and messing up,' Barron told me, 'and making something cool.'
But with the Wires—all of whom are either students at or graduates of Lewis & Clark College—rock 'n' roll shtick is no laughing matter. Their studied approach to such simple music gives even a cover of a celebrated tear-jerker like 'Teenager in Love' by Dion and the Belmonts a grim and deliberate intensity. In fact, Barron takes an almost academic tone when talking about his music, explaining the Wires' sound as trying 'to get back to something that was really pure...something so simple, it was almost pristine.'
The Wires play the Red Room with Qwong and molly BANG on Friday (9 pm. Free. 21+.), and the Tonic Lounge with the Shotgun and Emergency on Sunday (9:30 pm. $6. 21+).
WWeek 2015