Back In The Saddle

Sorry, folks, I got behind. And when I got behind, the idea of getting caught up again was just too daunting. But I've given up now. How does this benefit you, you wonder?

New posts, that's how.

New Year's Eve was the Fir Ball at the Doug Fir. Inside Voices opened up. Some potential, but lacking in variety of tempo. Just slooooooow. And kinda slow. And they varied from mostly twangy to really-really twangy. But all that bass...that's gotta be good for something. Next up was The Shaky Hands. I loved them for the two years they played live after their first album came out. Bouncy, happy, fun, poppy...it was easy to forgive them their hippie tendencies. Then they went into hibernation, and created the second album. Classic rawk with nary a bounce or a pop to be seen (heard). I was crushed. I avoided them. Like that former friend who did that one thing in high school, and you couldn't quite tell him how embarrassing it was, so you just went out of your way to avoid him in the halls and not make eye contact in math class. But they've found a middle ground that rocks (not rawks) and still buzzes and bounces with that weird, infectious voice Nick Delffs has. Last up, Quasi. Covering The Who. With special guests Sean Croghan and Corin Tucker. You know how amazing this sounds? Well, it was about a kazillion times better than that. I sang along. I bobbed my head. I headbanged! It was awesome.

Tonight, there was a free showcase at Backspace. We missed Zoo Girls, and decided (well, I decided, and because I'd had a really hard day, The Boyfriend went along with me) that classic 80s video games at Ground Kontrol around the corner would be more fun than Eat Skull. We came back for Tango Alpha Tango, which ranged from charming blues-folk to over-the-top classic groove metal reminiscent of Led Zeppelin but with more jams and screaming. I wasn't sure what to think, and it seemed to me neither was the band. Y La Bamba came next, and they were beautiful and subtle as always. The capacity all-ages crowd had no subtlety to spare for them, though when I got a chance to listen I enjoyed it. Finally, Typhoon finished up. Seemingly made up of everyone in every band and non-band project of Boy Gorilla Records (and Boy Gorilla Coffee, and Boy Gorilla Whatever Else), they relied heavily on drone-pop with lots of spaghetti western horn flourishes. Does this sound like it would suck? Because it didn't. They did have a number of more up-tempo bits that weren't so droney, but the horns were insistently and persistently spaghetti-ed. Great fun.

'Til next time,
OMS

Okay, so it started with this email.

Anyhow, it turns out there was a secret Dandy Warhols show at rontoms tonight. For free. In a room that holds, what, 150 people if they're all really, really good friends? And I was there. In the front row, so close that Courtney Taylor-Taylor could have spit on me. The Boyfriend gets these emails from rontoms telling him about the shows, and there was a *SURPRISE SECRET HEADLINER* and a hint. Marvelously, unbelievably, the-best-of 1990s with pedals galore and a bell-sleeved dress and a boy-bob haircut and a practiced sexy pout. It was a great time, and I'll get to tell my grandkids about it.

I know, I'm terribly behind. I'm working on it. Sasquatch, and PDX Pop Now!, and all sorts of little shows (and not-so-little ones) in between. There are posts galore in draft, half-finished, scribbled notes, snippets and partial sentences and fragments and bits, fermenting and bubbling, nearly ready to burst forth into cascades of schadenfreude and fascinated disdain. But today, I saw Jared Mees and the Grown Children, had a nice dinner entirely sourced from my garden and the farmer's market (except for some salt, pepper, butter, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar), then went to see the Dandies. Seriously...the Dandies. I'm still wowed by that.

More to come. As always.

Surmounting the Insurmountable

I've got two whole music festivals to review. It's like 100 bands. No, I don't mean it's "like 100 bands." If I were exaggerating, I'd tell you it was 124941 bands or something. I really think that between Sasquatch and PDX Pop Now!, I've got 100 bands to cover. I'll see what I can do.

See, I'm crazy far behind because of all these shows to see (and review), but also because of other stuff that isn't music-related. I found out in June that my mom has lung cancer. I only went out to see her for five and a half days, but it's just incredible what that takes out of my summer.

In not totally unrelated news, it's amazing what a sick mom going through chemo turns out to be a great excuse for, from...uh...not blogging, to getting The Boyfriend to take me out to a Pixar movie (perfect call, by the way, and from now on, I demand that Pixar release a new movie whenever I'm sad), to getting The Boss to do some work for me and go easy on me when other stuff isn't done!

I ought to start with Sasquatch. Three stages (plus a comedy/dance stage) for three days solid. To start with, I gotta say, two days was plenty. I mean, I'm glad they got rid of the anomalous, incongruous mismatch that was Friday night, and it's hard to complain that they replaced it with a third full day of top-to-bottom three-stage awesomeness. But I'm complaining. And then, they seem to have sold 150% of the tickets this year than in any past year I've gone (2007, 2006, 2004). There wasn't a spot near the main stage from the moment we got there to the second we left. There wasn't a way to get close to the second or even third stage. Nothing felt obscure or underappreciated. There wasn't anything I would remember for the rest of my life as a one-time-only front-row chance-of-a-lifetime like Decemberists on the third stage in '04. It was uncomfortably crowded from moment one to the second we passed the gate back into the parking lot for the third time. The sun was brutal, like knives on my grey Portland-wintered skin. The good news is that it didn't dip into the bitter, windy 50's in the evenings, and I never left miserable and shivering, wishing I could stay for the next band.

Day 1: Blind Pilot, a Portland band, was nice enough, with some really PDX-y twang-folk, vibraphones, banjo, violin, and upright bass. I would never complain about having to see them. Gotta admit, though, I would never complain about having to miss them. Death Vessel was minor-key folk-rock with violin and female vocals, some serious twang and some 1970s rock. Doves (I hate that they're not The Doves, they're Doves) were average alt-rock. Passion Pit were marvelous, with bouncy falsetto synth-fun. It was full of the kind of vaguely cynical joy that would be the perfect soundtrack to a lost John Hughes film (rest in peace, Breakfast Club!). I thought of the Snuggle-Ups. At this point, I lost The Boyfriend, and there is very nearly NO cell phone reception in The Gorge. I was distracted for the next few sets, wondering what would happen if we never found each other again in the sea of millions that was the Sasquatch crowd. I saw M. Ward, who is just as good live as he is in the studio. In other words, I could have just listened to the CDs. Devotchka was interesting, with accordion and violin, gypsy-influenced indie and straight-out gypsy. I'd like to hear more. The Mount St. Helens' Vietnam Band did some minor-key stuff in their rock. Interesting. Arthur & Yu was (at best) OK. Low key. Animal Collective was not as weird as expected, with some (ugh) world beats, mostly just aimless and repetitive, with some computer-psych and projected visuals. Sun Kil Moon started with a Red House Painters song and then followed with a bunch more that might have been RHP. Just too slow, pretty, and quiet for a weekend like this (or a weekend like those I spend at home doing things, either...). Somewhere in here, I was working my way up the hill by the main stage, when The Boyfriend somehow spotted me in the crowd. Whew! Ra Ra Riot was surprisingly un-riotous. With a name like that, you'd expect pop-rock '80s revival like every other band out there right now, but instead, there was a cello and a violin. Quiet bits and interesting details, with maybe a nod to Vampire Weekend here and there. The Decemberists did Hazards of Love straight through, like an orchestral-rock opera. I've seen them twice before at Sasquatch (and a dozen times or so other places), and this was a disappointment. No banter, no breaks at all between songs even, and certainly no singalongs and giant cardboard whale jaws. Though I have to admit, there's a ton of impressive, crushing rock in The Hazards of Love. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are retro early-80s girl-rock, wild and shouty with lots of eye makeup. There seems to be an invisible bass player. Bon Iver was pretty, with some complex lyrics and two or three drummers at times, a wailing falsetto like a musical saw, but still, occasionally boring in the midst of all this overstimulation. It would have been a great fit on Barsuk five or six years ago in the Nada Surf/All Time Quarterback/Rocky Votolato heyday.

Sunday, we started with Viva Voce. This was ROCK. We really needed some straight up rock. There were times, though, when they shaded a bit 1970s, and it seemed like they were going to meet their other band, Blue Giant, in some in-between musical middle ground. Viva Voce has become a four-piece with that one girl from that Portland band, you know the one, and that one other guy from that other band or two. Oh, yeah, the added female was Corrina Repp! Now I remember. I don't remember where we know the drummer from, though. Point Juncture, WA has become more beat-driven, with less vibraphone, but Amanda's voice still sounds like a vibraphone. Nice shorty jumpsuit, Amanda! Hockey was one-trick-pony party music, all deliberate throwback with sweatbands and little running shorts with the contrasting trim, but damn, were they a shit-ton of fun. They consistently remind me of Har Mar Superstar, except for the fact that one would never, ever want to see Sean in vintage little-bitty running shorts. Ew. The Walkmen were surprisingly uninteresting for all the attention they've gottten over the past however many years. Kind of a Brit-wannabe guitar-and-warble thing, occasional forays into Irish punk-lite. John Vanderslice, as always, managed to get the audience to give him things (sunglasses this time). A good set from him, but he's just never going to live up ever again to the Crystal Ballroom show from MFNW last year. Calexico was weird Mexishit. I like them less every time I hear them. I did a walk-through of the Fences set, and thought only they had some Barsuk-like potential. St. Vincent gave us a bunch of weird twinkly and boom-y noises that sometimes came together into a song, a bit Bjork-like. The song that sounded like 1930s Disney cartoon-short songs laid over total rawk guitar was probably pretty representative. The Builders And The Butchers continue to do some mashup of party rock, angry rebel folk-rock, 1970s faux-medieval, and actual medieval songs about the plague. Despite that description, they're a hell of a fun time. The Submarines could best be described as pop music for Target commercials, though they weren't quite as bad as Chairlift is (okay, that was an Ipod commercial, but the first nine times I heard it, I was sure it was a Target commercial). The Murder City Devils were certainly a rock band. It was a reunion show. They gave us messy, howling punk-rawk that referenced The Stooges and The Pixies...and yet, I didn't really enjoy it all that much. TV On The Radio was like an alt-rock Earth, Wind & Fire. Does that sound like a compliment? It's a compliment. The Boyfriend had this to say (he loves them): "Like a Prince and Steely Dan collaboration produced by Wayne Coyne." Gotta love that. M83 surprised me with the Kate Bush-like banshee vocals over the very-1980s orchestral ambie-rock. I went into it remembering they did orchy-ambie, but not the Bushy-banshee. At this point, we were just worn out, and skipped Of Montreal to go back to the hotel to sleep (yes, at my insistence we went with the soft life, a cottage with a big bed and ankle-deep sheepskin rugs and a mineral-bath whirlpool tub, rather than a tent plopped down in the middle of a dusty gravel-and-grass parking lot elbow to elbow with a gazillion other showgoers all partying all night).

Monday we caught just the tail end of The Heartless Bastards as we waited in line to have our bags searched. Sorry, Boyfriend, I know how much you wanted to see them. Their sound really filled the whole bowl at the main stage. Deerhoof followed: I would have been utterly gaga for this stuff in 1996. As it is, I still really enjoyed the super-twee tiny Asian female vocalist barking and crooning multilingually over experimental, sometimes-prog, sometimes-metal booming. There were even occasional funk-leaning bits, before they were again subsumed by the noise. The Pica Beats, despite the program's description, utterly failed at being Seattle's Decemberists. They had a Barsuk-y thing going on, major key with lots of ooh-ing, kind of indie-twee (but not twee-twee). I couldn't hear the lyrics well enough to decide if they too, like the Decemberists', were written by a word-drunk English major. Horsefeathers was loveably consistent, sounding like they always do, but there was no saw this time. We found a tiny bit of shade and lounged in this unexpected refuge, and the gentle old-style front-porch folk was the perfect accompaniment. Here, I started to lose track of what was going on. I think it was The Elephants that was all bouncy with xylophone, nearly worthy of pogo-ing up and down in the dust, with some sort of Vampire-Weekend-like Paul Simon references. I liked it well enough, but my mom would love it! The School of Seven Bells was up next--shoegazery, gothy electro-n-guitar wail. Kind of Siouxie and the Banshees-ish, but her voice wasn't really strong enough to carry it. Gogol Bordello was aiming for gypsy-punk, but undershot and ended up with cartoon-pirate cheese and Lord Of The Dance synth awfulness and some Klezmer Metallica (that's even worse than it sounds). Blitzen Trapper has gotten remarkably consistent. I'm not sure I love them, but they're really good at what they do, mostly 1970s twang southern-rock stuff that's almost but not quite tongue-in-cheek. With the mustaches and bellies to match. Monotonix was loud, with nods to The Doors and Hendrix, but with crowd-surfing (and standing on a drum held up by the crowd, and other "X-Treme!!!" variants on this theme). Interesting to watch trumped interesting to listen to. I'm glad I saw the Silversun Pickups so I could finally lay to rest that internal debate. It turns out the vocalist is male. That makes the band already about 72% less interesting. No, I don't usually prefer female-led bands, it's just that otherwise, SSP just sounds like middle-years Smashing Pumpkins in a not-very-interesting way. Beach House got lazily compared to the Beach Boys in the Stranger reviews...shit, not even close, guys. Repetitive, slow-moving pop without the deliberate electro that would save something described as "repetitive and slow-moving". Girl Talk was a sometimes-interesting, sometimes-too-popcultury layering of a bunch of rap (not hip-hop, really, just rap) over a bunch of pop music samples and references from the past 40 years: Jackson 5, Men Without Hats (Pop Goes The World!), Red Hot Chili Peppers, MGMT, and an overwhelming bunch of pop tripe I don't recognize and don't wanna. Erykah Badu was so not my thing. I don't understand why she was on this bill. I wasn't the only one--the crowd at the mainstage was as sparse as it was all weekend, and plenty of the people who were there weren't paying attention. The actual old-skool fingers-on-a-record-on-a-turntable scratching was pretty cool. The rest of it was too-current-sounding soul-r&b-lite-black-oriented-pop-radio crap. Finally, Explosions In The Sky did a lot of stuff in 3, pretty and pounding, all instrumental. I wanna put it on a mixtape...or better yet, receive a song or two on a mixtape, so I don't need to buy any.

The end.

Followed by a long, leisurely drive back to Portland, skipping the gorge to drive over the mountains and skirt Mount Rainier. Very pretty, and it was interesting to get up into some real elevation and see thick layers of snow still on the ground, many feet deep. We had taken the gorge route the previous weekend when...oh, I didn't tell this story, did I? The boyfriend asked if I'd go to The Gorge Amphitheater the previous weekend to see The Dead (not The Grateful Dead, just what's left of them). After about seven seconds of trying to figure out how to say this tactfully, I just gave up and said, "culturally, I can't make that leap." Because I can't stand hippies, and I can't imagine hanging out with a crowd that has their own language and their competitive insideriness and their defensive hate for anyone who actually makes a pathetic (but nonetheless somehow upper-class, nouveau riche, and gauche?...maybe it's the deodorant, or maybe just the forty-nine-cent comb I can't live without) five figures a year working full-time for genuine justice and equality, because I make them look lazy and ineffective...and oh yeah, I hate The Grateful Dead and any variant thereof just utterly viscerally. The sound makes me just cringe. To me, death sounds like a reasonable alternative. After a day or two of mulling that over, rather than being (probably justifiably) resentful, The Boyfriend charmingly asked, "Well, do you want do go to Washington with me for the weekend anyway?" We stayed in a room in a B&B that was a converted late-mid-century church, I'm pretty sure our room was in the choir loft. Over the two weekends, we tried just about every breakfast joint in the county, explored the little natural foods store, toured a little homestead history center, and tried out a few wineries. And had some of the best food in, of all places, Yakima, WA. Three meals in Yakima, three absolute home runs.

Wow, that was a load off my chest. Glad I could share that with you, and not have to keep it all inside anymore. More jubilant mexican food and uncontrollable hippie hate to come. Or at least more music on the docket.

To all things not hairy and reclusive

Getting one step closer to being caught up? Shit, it's a long road. It's a good thing I take notes! This post covers all things not Sasquatch (the music festival). The first show on the list was John Vanderslice at Mississippi Studios. I walked into the middle of the Mimicking Birds set. It was whispery folk/non-folk/post-folk minor-key sometimes-arhythmic stuff. I kinda liked it. I could imagine listening to it late at night with a crowd of friends, if I were the sort of person who sat around in a darkened living room late at night with a crowd of friends. It had a bit of the Nick-Drake-Volkswagen-commercial vibe--not that it sounded like that, it just had that feel. Once, as the band got started slowly into a song, someone in the back of the club started clapping far, far off the rhythm, and the lead singer looked out into the audience with an air of fear. There was an oddly Paul Simon bit in there somewhere, and some stuff that sounded like My Morning Jacket but without Jim James. JV was up next. He did some new stuff, including one that was startling in its intensity. I mean, even compared to most of his stuff. And many of his songs have this disturbing, almost dangerous quality to them. One of the things I love about Vanderslice. though, is how quickly his songs become familiar, even though they're odd and complex. I left humming Too Much Time, and bought the new album on my way out. Vanderslice loves his fans, and loves Portland. The stage banter is almost the best part. It's kind of fascinating watching him convince the audience to give him things. This time it was a flashlight, to light the dark part of the stage where his keyboardist was sitting. He tossed it up to someone in the balcony who carefully trained it on the dark corner. He talked, like he does every time he's here, about how much he wants to move to Portland. "I moved to San Francisco to be with a girlfriend. I should have just kept going up I-5." (someone in the audience:) "You can find a Portland girlfriend!" (JV:) "Yeah, I'm sure my wife would love that!" Later on: "Do we have a set list?" (someone in the audience:) "I took it." (JV:) "Oh, okay, can you read me what's next?" Several times, he started a song, then stopped. "I fucked that up...can we start over?" It's like hanging out with the guy. But it's kind of uncomfortable when the audience treats it as such, shouting out between songs faux-personal connections about that one time I talked to you at that show in that one city, do you remember? I don't really want to be associated with those folks, the ones called home by his stories of mental illness and desperation. I just want to revel in the complicated storytelling and the intensity of the guitar, broken up by goofball self-effacement and playful interaction between songs.

Sasquatch came next, sequentially. Three days of three music stages (sometimes four) out in the baking sun of the Eastern Washington high desert. That gets a post all to itself--maybe two.

I've actually lost track of the sequence of all the other non-Sasquatch shows! I will randomly pull notes out of the pile next to me on the couch. And the winner is....Bazillionaire! At Langano Lounge, which is the basement of an Ethiopian restaurant. This is the new-er-ish band of Jesse, who used to be in Point Juncture, WA. Jesse may be one of the nicest people I've ever met. I once gave him someone else's Oreos, because he's just so nice you can't help but do things like that. I was so relieved that the band was really likeable. I'd hate to dislike the music of someone so damn nice. As they launched into their set, I thought, "It's kinda like Nada Surf, but loud, messy, live-sounding, and awesome." Jesse: "That's the one that sounds like Nada Surf." I heard a bunch of other good '90s stuff in Bazillionaire: The Promise Ring, various Apartment Music bands. Great '90s indie echoes seem to be the theme for Langano Lounge (...she pronounces definitively after being there twice). They had a viola player that apparently drove up from Southern Oregon somewhere and rehearsed with them for a night. The bassist is reportedly the new bassist for Swim Swam Swum, which is odd beyond belief. SSS is music for pogo-ing wildly to, bouncy punk-pop joy. The bassist stood statue-like and still, her back to the audience, watching her fingers. In SSS, she will look like she's in slow motion. Maybe she'll run in terror from the stage.

Next drawn out of the hat is the PDX Pop Now! 2009 CD release party! This year, I was prepared for (and resigned to) the uncomfortable setup that is Holocene as an all-ages venue. Nice gesture, poor design. The avid drinkers among us (show of hands? my hand's up...) are kind of ghettoized to what ends up feeling like a little catwalk next to the bar. But the emcee for the night was adorably gorgeous in a tuxedo (hi Seth!). Anyhow, The Taxpayers started out. They had kind of a Jared Mees vibe, with bits of Irish punk, a moment of klezmer, and a good dose of garage rock. And some accordion. Is there such a thing as accordion punk? They apparently told long, rambling stories and jokes, but I couldn't hear any of that. Next up, What's Up? This was all instrumental. I have little patience for all-instrumental stuff. But they managed to hold my interest admirably. Three guys playing their set in the middle of the crowd, with keyboards, bass, and either drums or guitar. It was math-rock-y but fun, not I'm-smarter-than-you mean-spirited. I tried (and mostly failed) to take some cool pictures of the set. Jared Mees and the Grown Children were up next. I found it a bit unfortunate that they were on a bill with The Taxpayers, who sorta stole their shtick. Bouncy twang-craziness that you can't help but love. The boyfriend asked him about the song The Tallest Building In Hell. Is it about a relationship gone painfully and irrevocably sour, or is it about stressful and difficult times ultimately resolved? I was on the side of the lyric, "patience pays off...eventually." I seem to have won that one. Copy was up last. I took a few pictures of the keytar, then crashed, losing all ability to make sense of what was going on. I'm pretty sure I helped with clean up, then...was there Potato Champion? I have a vague memory of The Carts that may or may not have been from that night.

Finally, I went to this show at A Roadside Attraction for one reason and one reason only. I came across info on this band called What Hearts, and there was apparently a band member with the same name as a pretty good friend of mine from high school with whom I had lost contact years ago. What's the chance it could be the same person? Someone highly Nordic from suburban Minneapolis? What Hearts was what could, either uber-charmingly or cliche-dly be called 'old-timey music.' It was whispery, twangy, and ultimately beautifully lacking in novelty. I was entranced. It did end up being that high school friend of mine, and it was both mundane and profound to make such an old connection and have it feel both familiar and unexpected/distant/nostalgic. They were followed by an act led by a female musician with a stellar if a bit decorative and romantic-pop voice, who played some piano and then a bit of...accordion? Wait just a minute. With hair like that, and that nose...it's Ali Ippolito! She continues to be a remarkable musician whose musical tastes I just don't always jibe with. Angry accordion solo (yes!) into sexy-piano-pop-blues like Fiona Apple (no! Go back!).

But wait, there's more! Just not right this second. Sasquatch still to come. Lots and lots of Sasquatch.

Next!

Still getting caught up. I just realized I saw a show I did not list in the attempt at a list in the last post. A benefit for PDX Pop Now! called Make It Pop!. Ryan Sollee of The Builders And The Butchers started, but I got there just for half of the last song. I had a cupcake and a beer from Captured By Porches brewing. I'd like to drink more of their beers. Loch Lomond played next, and they were the only full band of the night. Richie Young's vocal range never fails to astound me. He ranged from birdlike to baritone, with the band occasionally calling up Fleet Foxes and pointing the occasional finger at an Irish folk dirge. Then there was cake. Marty Marquis of Blitzen Trapper followed. I guess he's not the main songwriter for BT, but certainly worthwhile in his own right. He looks like a math genius heading toward his first psychotic break, with this wild, curly red hair and beard that looks all ready to matt up at any provocation. And the glasses to match. Like BT, he calls largely upon the '70s, but instead of BT's prog rock, he goes more of a Neil Young slant, with some fingerpicking and a nod to Gordon Lightfoot. And some good stage banter about Yakima and ghosts. Brandon Summers of The Helio Sequence was next on the bill. He also called upon Neil Young, lots of strummed guitar and harmonica. There were also moments that recalled Paul Simon. I suddenly felt like everyone in Portland is exactly my age. My musical childhood seems to be reflected everywhere around me. James Mercer of The Shins headlined. A tiny venue holding maybe 100 people (okay, the Ace Hotel site says The Cleaners holds 160, but I bet it's less once you set up a space for the band to play), mostly seated cross-legged on the floor, enthralled. He played some familiar stuff, some unrecorded stuff, and a couple of brand new songs. He twanged things up a little to match with the '70s-folk vibe of much of the rest of the show. He said Weird Divide is his mom's favorite song. My mom really likes The Shins, but everything she likes is mid-tempo and major-key, so Weird Divide is out. It was utterly kick-ass.

Next up was The Shins and The Delta Spirit at the Crystal Ballroom. The Delta Spirit was all references, no referrer. All hat, nothing to hang it on. This one sounds kind of like Joe Cocker, then that one sounds all Dylan-wannabe, with some Springsteen bits...oh, a few moments of Tom Waits before a whole bunch more Joe Cocker. "We're playing rock!" Eh. The Shins always put on a great show. They make these pretty songs that are a bit weird, and then live, they make these weird, pretty songs rock. Garage rock from the late '60s. But pretty. And weird. It was interesting to see the full band at the Crystal just a week or less after seeing James Mercer solo from 11 feet away. Again, a few new songs, which bodes well on the new album front. They did what Spoon did when I saw them at the Crystal a couple of months ago: Take their familiar songs and filter them through a kaleidoscope of a zillion fractured and shifting influences and references and tongue-in-cheek stealing from classic bands. The Shins doing Spoon covering Billy Joel borrowing from early '70s garage punk. The Shins doing Devo doing a calypso arena-rock number. The Shins pretending they're the Doobie Brothers but with Andy Summers playing guitar. Sadly, New Slang was just kind of the perfunctory "we have to play this, but let's just get through it" cover of themselves that the most pop single always seems to get from innovative bands like this. I'd love it if interesting bands reconstructed their singles in live shows the way they do other songs. Then, on top of all the references and playing at being other bands, The Shins actually covered a Beach Boys song. It was pretty great. To come full circle for my week, they started the encore with a cover of Neil Young's Helpless. See? Everyone in Portland is my age, and grew up sitting on the speaker in their footie pajamas while their dads played their favorite records over and over again. It was a marvelous show, and I left happy.

Side note: My parents are moving and semi-retiring, and getting rid of most of their stuff. My dad's set aside a bunch of records for me. At first, when he told me there were 22 of them, I was sure I'd veto most of them, but no, it was just a few. I'm getting Simon and Garfunkel, The Doobie Brothers, and (blush...I shouldn't admit this) James Taylor. Earth, Wind & Fire. Neil Young. Crosby, Stills & Nash's first record. Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell (Court & Spark!). Sergio Mendez & Brazil '66. Though I was crushed to find out that the stellar, high-end Technics record player from the early 1980s, this perfect-condition piece of machinery that would be the envy of any DJ, got sold in the estate sale. You win some, you lose some. At least I get the cookie jar.

Has it really been two months?

Okay, so I've been busy. But that's no excuse for ignoring you, the blogoverse, is it? NO, it is not. Bad OMS. I'm not sure I can even count how many bands I've seen in that time. A quick review gives me 56, but I figure I must be forgetting some. There was some good (and great), some bad, and definitely some ugly.

The Heartless Bastards, with Gaslight Anthem and A Death In The Family. Andrew Oliver Kora Band and Krebsic Orkestar (real Balkan gypsies, not jam-band hippies). The Shins and Delta Spirit. Bazillionaire. What Hearts and...oh, some band that was led by Ali Ippolito (it may be called When The Broken Bow). The 2009 PDX Pop Now! CD release show with Copy, Jared Mees and the Grown Children, What's Up (ETA: I have been corrected. They are, it turns out, What's Up?.), and The Taxpayers. John Vanderslice and Mimicking Birds. And Sasquatch, which has bloated to three full days, where I saw: Blind Pilot, Death Vessel, Doves, Passion Pit, M. Ward, Devotchka, Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, Arthur & Yu, Animal Collective, Sun Kil Moon, Ra Ra Riot, The Decemberists, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver, Viva Voce, Point Juncture WA, Hockey, The Walkmen, John Vanderslice (again), Calexico, Fences, St. Vincent, The Builders and the Butchers, The Submarines, Murder City Devils, TV On The Radio, M83, The Heartless Bastards (again), Deerhoof, The Pica Beats, Horsefeathers, Bishop Allen, School of Seven Bells, Gogol Bordello, Blitzen Trapper, The Duchess and the Duke, Monotonix, Silversun Pickups, Beach House, Girl Talk, Erykah Badu (not by choice, I swear), and Explosions In The Sky.

Am I forgetting anything?

I'll start at the very beginning. A very good place to....erm...sorry. I thought i had exorcised Mary Poppins. Anyhow, moving on. I hadn't been to Berbati's in a long time, but one of The Boyfriend's favorite bands was playing, so there we were. Thanks to confusion about how Berbati's labels tickets (I've also shown up an hour before the music starts over this, leading to total awkwardness), we missed Cage The Elephant, which is too bad, because the New Music Hour song is pretty good. We walked in early in the Death In The Family Set. Teenage-boy-working-at-a-gas-station-with-the-little-undergrown-mustache-hoping-he's-more-emotional-and-deep-than-his-high-school-dropout-peers aggro-lite. Music for guys with an IQ of 90. The Boyfriend: "At least they're not from Portland." OMS: "Nah, they'd be from Gresham." Then, the reason we were there, The Heartless Bastards. A particular favorite of The Boyfriend. I'd call them the best possible version of caucasian bar-blues-rock. Because caucasian girl-fronted twang-leaning blues-rock is such a narrow genre, it overlapped with things I hate, like Tina & The B-Sides and early KD Lang, but the absolute lack of self-conscious schtick saved it every time it wandered into those territories. The drums were absolutely ass-kicking. The venue has seen better crowds. Once, a bouncer suddenly perked up, ears forward. A second or less later, he leapt into action, diving into the crowd to grab a guy by the throat and shove him backward out the door. He apparently deserved it, though once The Boyfriend pulls me deep into the front-of-the-stage crowd, I can't see anything except the headstock of the bass and the weird hair of that one guy ten inches in front of me, who isn't really even very tall, but moves two inches every time I do, without fail. The crowd did get difficult a couple of times, once at this loud, chatty couple who, once they decided (under duress) to leave, got shoved in the back so I ended up with her beer all over me. Thanks, I hadn't noticed a problem before that. Last up, Gaslight Anthem. Really lite aggro-lite. Almost emo-core. One guy (bass?) looked a bit like Henry Rollins' wussy momma's boy little brother. The guy who was at the show in his Black Flag safety-pinned jacket should hang his head in shame. Bad, bad stuff. We left early.

Next was the Andrew Oliver Kora Band and Krebsic Orkestar at Mississippi Studios. The Boyfriend snagged free tix by being on the Mississippi Studios mailing list (I sometimes do the same with the Doug Fir list), so I had no idea what we were getting into. The who what-now? And an Orkestar? Shit, don't make me go see an Orkestar! It's gonna be a jam band, isn't it, but with mandolin and flute or something. I just know it. But I'll try anything once. At least I'll get to complain about it in my blog. How wrong I was! The Andrew Oliver Kora Band was traditional jazz (keys, trumpet played by an old man in Converse, drums, bass, occasional guitar) wrapped up with some West African kora music. The world-beat elements were so subtle I didn't gag as it went down. Turns out a kora sounds a lot like the bastard child from an illicit harp-banjo tryst. I ended up really enjoying some of it, when the west-African sounds were more '30s Paris jazz club exotic and less world beat boring. Krebsic Orkestar turned out not to be a jam band! That revelation was like finding out you don't have to have that root canal after all. It was big band x eastern European gypsy stuff, which could have gone either of two ways, but was marvelously dark and smoky rather than silly cheese. Had they covered Caravan, it would have fit perfectly. They had three trombones, a souzaphone, three trumpets, a...what's the sideways bent-up trumpet? Oh! Flugelhorn! I adore the flugelhorn. Where was I? Oh...yeah, a saxophone, and three percussionists. Their utterly unplanned, unrehearsed encore occurred in the middle of the floor in a circle. The people doing the probably traditional-folk line-dancing in the audience seemed like snooty nerds, but I didn't let them ruin my enjoyment of the show except when I had to move out of their way or get stepped on. Some people...give me one good reason I should go out of my way to accommodate you? Why should I move so you can enjoy yourself, rather than you staying the hell out of my way so I can enjoy myself? But anyhow, much fun, and a pleasant surprise.

Much, much more to come. Much.

Church on Sunday

It's a crazy busy few weeks for shows. Marvelousness everywhere. A little over a week ago, it was Alan Singley & Pants Machine, World's Greatest Ghosts, and Point Juncture, WA at the brand-spankin'-new Mississippi Studios. First, the venue: They've salvaged a lot of wood out of the old place. The big ceiling beams might be salvaged, the door frames and the stairs certainly are. They did some of their shopping down the street at The Rebuilding Center (love) and some at Rejuvenation (repro for suburbanites). There's a marvelous garage door that was closed at the beginning of the evening, then opened to allow access to the bar. And they're doing nearly-weekly movie nights that I totally wanna be there for.

Singley's gotten all orchestral. They were a five-piece tonight, with Alan on keys and/or guitar and vox, Gus Elg, Leb Borgerson (these have always been the core three), plus sax-and-porkpie-hat, and violin. Amanda Spring joined them for a song or two. They're always a sprawling mess, though with five or six it seems to get more out of hand. Though maybe it's that Alan isn't writing such tight, adorable gems. The older, cuter songs I knew well seemed on par. As always, they split the difference between rocking out and goofing off. There were late-nite talk-show band bits, and some post-prime-time soft-core cop show theme song bits, but overall, it was total punk showtunes.

I don't think I've seen World's Greatest Ghosts before. I either missed them at PDX Pop Now! 2008, or I saw them in the midst of total overwhelm, and I'm too lazy to look back and figure out which. I loved 'em. Exuberant, with some punk and some geek and some melodic pop. A five-piece with keys, two guitars, bass, and drums (and at least four people who sang at various times). Some rhythmic oddities that were fun, and a good amount of squealing distortion. For the geek-punk-pop axis in town, the Jad Fair quotient was a surprisingly modest 22.1%.

PJWA started out with some complex rhythmic songs that were almost un-head-bobbable. Though I did my best. As they get more rock without losing their chamber/choral/fuzz (and totally anti-portland) sound, I hear a good bit of Low in what they do. The Boyfriend, who doesn't know Low, heard Radiohead. I know where he's coming from, but that didn't seem like quite as good a fit to me.

Next, I went to Explode Into Colors, Parenthetical Girls, and The Thermals at Wonder Ballroom. First up, The Boyfriend embarassed me by telling someone who knows stuff about music that I write about music. Shit, this isn't writing! Writing involves editing. I rant, or occasionally rave, about music. I go on for pages at a time. And the crucial piece here, what makes writing writing, is that others read it. If people read this shit, I'd stop doing it. I figure the internet is the perfect place to hide. It's safer than a diary under my bed. Anyhow, Explode Into Colors was like a very young, early Sleater-Kinney doing super-weird beats. A drummer, a percussionist (drummer and multi-instrumentalist, including harmonium and lots and lots of cowbell), and a vocalist/six-string-bassist. All female. I walked in to drums and vocal yips. That was probably the most minimalist, though there were plenty of bits that were just percussion and wordless vox. There were a few songs with words, but most involved two-part harmony wordlessness. "This one's about my friend Amy, who moved to Jamaica." The words? Aaaaah...ooooohhhh. Aaaaahhh. I just don't know how I feel about the conceit that that song was about something. The Boyfriend: "It's like a Rothko being about something." No, he'd say the paintings were about color. Maybe emotion. But he wouldn't say, "this is a picture of my dog." Overall, primal and tribal, booming, interesting and engaging. I'm not sure I love 'em, but the worst I can offer (except when they're making that vocal yipping noise) is the occasional raised eyebrow.

Parenthetical Girls: The Boyfriend said about 296034671 times, "I want to know what you think about this band." But I already knew he hated them, which changed my lens a bit. 30 seconds in, my interpretation was, "I see why you hate them, but I think I might really like this." But five minutes in, it had shot over the top without any indication it would ever come back down. Imagine Morrissey's personality disorder filtered through Colin Meloy's theatricality. Maybe a shot of Alan Singley's joyful exuberance. And then some nods to light operetta. I kept expecting the lead singer to break out into a cockney accent. It was occasionally funny, but so stagey. The one chick was in a Dorothy in Oz dress, and may have been wearing red shoes. The keyboardist looked like a zombie, as if he were playing from beyond the grave. And the vocalist postured and danced and gestured. Far too much.

The Thermals are just The Thermals. Perfect punk-rock. Kathy is gorgeous, which doesn't hurt matters, and her hair was described as "mesmerizing". I'd call them an amazing live band, but their recorded stuff sounds just like this. The one complaint I'd have is how alike their songs sound. I think at the beginning of every song, "Do I know this one?" I'm never sure. They had a couple of more down-tempo ones that must be from the new disc. The Nirvana cover (Sappy...I had to google the lyrics..."you're in a laundry room...") was spot-on yet still sounded exactly, exactly like The Thermals. Are they a closet grunge band?

Tonight was Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes at the Crystal. It was the ultimate bill for those of us who grew up in the 1970s. Blitzen Trapper took the schtick to the extreme, with the shoulder-length hair, bellies, and beards. I found them amusing, though not necessarily awesome. The Boyfriend wondered why I like them if I hate the Grateful Dead. Shudder. The only answer is that this is deliberate schtick. It was total prog-folk weirdness. There was a "this is going to be a Billy Joel song...oh, nope, twangy Eagles ballad!" bit that probably explained everything perfectly.

Then Fleet Foxes. Perfect for Easter: Medieval (pagan?) folk-madrigal without the fat chicks with tattoos who call themselves "wench". I don't get why my indie-alt people like this stuff. I know it calls to that last hidden, un-cynical bit of me. It's there, it really is, but it's tiny. The folk-with-no-twang just warms me and makes me happy. Nick Jaina once described some stuff of his as "sleepytime music," and that descriptor totally fits here. The Boyfriend and I argued over whether it was more like Carole King or Joni Mitchell (okay, it's not Court and Spark, but neither is most of Joni Mitchell's stuff, so there!). Plus some Cat Stevens, and Bridge- and Bookends-era Simon and Garfunkel--I so wanted them to cover Save The Life Of My Child! Oh, yeah, and House-at-Pooh-Corner-like Loggins and Messina, but that was the charming stuff, right? Again, it makes me want to be a preschooler sitting on the speaker while my dad spins records trying to get me to sleep. I went home happy.

More to come, I've got tix stacked to the ceiling. It's apparently music season!

A Month Or So In Review.

Still playing catch-up. Some time late last month, I went to see a three-band show at the DF. First up, Juan Prophet Organization. I was there with someone who likes to be at shows right on time, damnit! So we were there for this opening band, and regretted it. Damn, I hate bands in costumes. One guy dressed like Orville Redenbacher, another in a tux, a Tim-Burton-claymation-esque wench (who probably calls herself a wench...*shudder*) except not wraithlike and thin, and a genuine unitard-and-mask fucking superhero costume. Seriously? The music was like a vampire-metal stage musical as staged by a...ugh...troupe of Renaissance Festival minstrels in their off-season. After the set was over, all I could say was, "Let us never speak of this again." Oops...here I go speaking of it. Well, this will be the last time, I swear. Next, and the reason we were there (a favorite of the showgoing companion): Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights. I really want to like this guy, I swear I do. I'm thisclose. The vaguely orchestral bits are lovely. The traditional/americana nods are perfectly done. Interesting chords and rhythms. And then Robley's voice slips into a White Lion-esque hard-rock-ballad warble, and I'm jarred out of my enjoyment. Briefly, sure, but repeatedly. The word 'gone' does NOT have a 'w' in the middle! One syllable! ONE, damnit! Sigh. Thisclose. Finally, Heroes and Villains. I saw them once a few years ago, and hoped they had changed. Not much, sadly. It's kind of fun, but ultimately gimmicky. A cool collection of instruments put together mostly just to be a cool collection of instruments--celeste, a tiny organ-grinder's-monkey bass, tiny glockenspiel (of course), mandolin (I've come to hate the mandolin), and a bowler hat. They seemed to be playing dress-up, which just always seems amateurish to me. At some point, as a musician, don't you stop carefully selecting your costume-y outfit for every show? I still love Ali Ippolito and her accordion. The other chick's voice, though, was just grating and Lillith-Faire-y. We left early.

Next up...Spoooooon! (...said The Tick.) Some band called Everest opened. They were more-or-less adequate, not interesting, not awful. Spoon did their typical '60s garage-rock attack, but then threw in all this unexpected stuff, too. Is this a cover of some lost Pat Benetar B-side? Is there some Elvis Costello ballad I don't know about that they're channeling here? Though both times they tried to ballad (there really aren't Spoon ballads), they gave it up halfway through and decided to all-out rock. That's what they're good at, and damn, are they good at it! Some early-'80s Genesis, a helicopter noise, an underwater nature special...and every moment overwhelming and kick-fucking-ass. This was a one-off show rather than part of a tour and it showed, in a good way (though when they toured for Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, they totally tore shit up, too). I think Britt Daniel had gotten a new echo pedal, and called up the rest of the band in Austin, and said, "Come on up to Portland! The new pedal's coming FedEx!" It was like the new toy he couldn't put down.

Last up, a Show Someone Else Wanted To See (SSEWtS). I'd never been to Satyricon before (either the old Satyricon, which was defunct by just months after I'd moved here, or the new Satyricon, where this show was). It seemed pretty friendly for a punk club. The graffiti in the bathroom was, on the whole, kinda upbeat, and the band stickers were actually lined up, so they must be there on purpose. Dingy, as it ought to be, but some kind of interesting elements, like the distressed composite-stone bar, some sparkly vinyl booths, cute repro starburst formica tables, and galvanized-steel details. Maldroid was up first. Dressed in thrift-store suit jackets with band logos appliqued like country-club crests, an ascot, and a pair of white plastic sunglasses, they were goofy robot-electro-punk. The Devo cover fit in seamlessly, which should pretty much explain everything you need to know. They were pretty fun, and had their shit together. The Punk Group followed, and they were also uber-electro and Devo-influenced, with the occasional bizarro Mojo Nixon bit (once, I wanted to shout, "Elvis is everywhere!", but then the Devo kicked back in). Two guys and a lot of synth-looped and recorded sounds. And dancing. I would have liked this a lot more had misogyny not substituted for cleverness. This one's about a fat chick...this one's about an ugly chick...hey, another one about a fat chick. What could have been fun ended up vaguely irritating. They seem to have gone sunglasses shopping with Maldroid. And then, the SSEWtS we were there for, The Phenomenauts. Sci-fi rocka-punkabilly-surfpunk without exception. One punkabilly song = fun. A whole show of punkabilly songs = repetitive. And then there were the costumes...both onstage and in the audience (gag...wretch...ew). Rehearsed stage banter (to which the audience had its rehearsed responses...I'm not sure whether I disdain that sort of thing more when I don't know what the response is supposed to be, or when I do...) that was about their outer-space origins. So here's what I figured out: Surfpunk is punkabilly at half tempo. There was a cover...The Ramones? Good stuff, whatever it was. The band was fun, and danceable, but in the end, the spectacle and theatrics overshadowed the music, which was just too narrow-genre to really grab me. I remember the fog machine and the balloon and the toilet paper gun and the lasers, not the songs. I feel bad saying this about a band, because I really didn't dislike them, but...I would have loved this band when I was nineteen. I've just become a total snot about spectacle (oh, yeah, and the whole tightly-convention-bound genre of punkabilly) as I grow older. All in all, it was best described as a decent way to spend an evening, with the occasional pointy nudge of discomfort that comes from being forced to face my background as a total nerd. I'm not going to become a fan, but I'm not going to complain that I'll never get those hours back, either.

Sheesh, now that I'm caught up, it's time to go out and see some damn shows!

A long, long time ago in a place far, far away

I should have made a new year's resolution or something. Post things right away, instead of waiting until you've forgottten all the details. Except that the only new year's resolution I've ever kept was the time I resolved not to make any more new year's resolutions, because not only do I not keep them, but it's a stupid tradition anyway. Why engage in failed self-reflection and self-improvement once a year, when you can do it all the time? Wait, that didn't come out right...

I had this lovely idea that I'd tell you about my vacation. Sure, it's not music, but it was fun. But now, it's so long ago and seems so far away. Of course, I just went to the coast. It's not that far away. I stayed in this little attached-cottage thing with a fireplace and an oblique view of the ocean, with huge rocks sending up great sprays of salt water as the tide came in on the sorta-private beach. Technically, there are no private beaches in Oregon, but there are plenty of beaches that are impossible to reach because they're surrounded by cliffs. This hotel, The Surfrider, just north of Depoe Bay, built stairs down the cliff to the otherwise impossible beach, so you can only reach it from the hotel. Or by kayak, or helicopter or something. The cottage was charmingly dated, probably built in the 1950s and last redecorated in the 1970s, and I loved it (the rest of the place seems condo-ish and...well, nice, if you like that sort of thing). I ate a massive amount of local and/or regional seafood (if I couldn't drive there the next day on a whim, I wouldn't eat fish that came from there). Some was astounding, like the fish and chips at Luna Sea fishery/fishmonger/tiny lunch spot in Yachats. I picked up a can of smoked tuna there that made a beautiful sauce for pasta. Some was only so-so, like the Huge-Ass Mound Of Seafood platter (or something like that) at Gracie's Sea Hag. Anyone who tells you it's one of the better places to eat on the coast hasn't been there in 20 years. I had good clam chowder (Rogue Public House in Newport, where I went primarily for the beer), and dull clam chowder (a little diner in Depoe Bay). As you can tell, vacation for me is all about the food.

And drink. I visited several wineries, including a very fun if somewhat ill-advised (by the time I had a beer at bowling that night, I was flat-out drunk) tour through the wine country of Dundee on my way home. On the coast: Flying Dutchman, calling themselves the only winery on the Oregon coast, had a couple of interesting wines. The Wine Cave or whatever it's called in Depoe Bay had mostly fruit wines from Nehalem Bay winery--fun, silly, and lacking complexity. The real grape wines (I don't remember who they were from, but probably just as well) were dull and watery tasting, and also lacking in complexity. They had a marechal foch, but even that wasn't any good. In the valley: Archery Summit, all pinot noirs, was pretty fascinating stuff, but crazy expensive. I had a long talk with a former Multnomah County commissioner who was also there tasting, about mental health funding. De Ponte Cellars also had some worthwhile stuff, and an incredible view! And by the time I got to Argyle, I was beginning to get a bit loopy. But I do remember that many of their wines are better and more interesting than the few of theirs you can get in the grocery store, and perhaps more worth the money. I also visited Rogue Public House in Newport (the home base of the Rogue empire). I got a sampler at the public house. Juniper Ale: Eh. A mild, sweet-ish pale ale that was not strongly junipery nor hoppy. Santa's Private Reserve: Hoppy and malty, maybe a bit too malty-sweet-sour for me. But the hop aroma was lovely and perfumey, just like I like it. Sesquicentennial Ale is made with lots of local ingredients for the state's 150th birthday. It's supposed to feature local hops, but what I noticed first was the spice flavors--almost rootbeery (but in a good way, I swear!). It was a dark honey color, and eventually settled down into a nice IPA style, though again, maltier than I like. Mocha Porter: Very toasty and roasty! Definitely accurately named, with clear bittersweet chocolate and coffee flavors. The texture was a bit flat, like a nitro but not. This was my favorite of the bunch. I brought home a Smoke Beer, which is a traditional German rauchbier. This one knocked me on my ass with its unbelievable awesomeness. It was like a deep honey-colored pale ale, and smoking the malt totally killed the sweetness and sour notes. Very smoke-flavored, and it was perfect to drink in front of the Petroleum-Based Wood Replacement Product fire, because the smoke aroma made up for the lack of wood fire smell! Lighter in color and malt flavor than other rauches I've had. Amazing. I also brought home a Yellow Snow IPA, which was damn good, and didn't suffer from the imbalance in malty sweetness that the other IPA-like beers did.

Aside from the eating, and drinking, and eating, and drinking some more, I did actually spend quite a bit of time both taking pictures of the ocean, and then putting the camera away and staring meditatively at it as it crashed and sprayed and lit up from behind. This is why I go to the coast in the winter. The vastness of the ocean, and the unhuman scale of its power, makes me feel very small, and it's the closest I get to a spiritual experience.

While driving up and down the coast between tiny towns, I was listening to lots of new stuff I've just acquired, but the one that spent the most time in heavy rotation was the new Point Juncture, WA disc, Heart To Elk. The week before, I'd seen their CD release in-store at Music Millenium. That show had a comparatively stripped-down, rock-esque sound with more guitar (and more guitar that sounded like guitar, rather than sounds from beyond the grave or a frightened animal, or a frightened animal from beyond the grave...) and no vibraphone. No vibraphone? It's like someone slipped a little Portland into their drinks while they weren't looking...but just a little. The disc is still refreshingly un-Portlandy. Un-punk, un-geek, un-americana. The class beauty (the quiet one who might also have been valedictorian), not the class clown. Amanda Spring's voice is like a muted bell, and the recording enhances that; Victor Paul Nash's voice is recorded to match. Orchestral and layered, with vibraphone (whew!), rich and lush yet also simple, built around unadorned vocals. The best way for me to describe this band is if a band of aliens encountered rock effects pedals and had no idea how they were used, so they made up their own uses for things like squealing guitar distortion, using it more like a violin than like a wailing assault of noise.

And all this was more than a month ago, so more to come! I'd offer previews, but it's probably just more efficient to start the next damn post. 'Til soon, imaginary readers!

This is a song. It's a singalong.

Here we go again. I've gone to see shows. I took some notes, I swear I did. But only a few scraps of paper are drifting across my coffee table waiting to be read, interpreted, and turned into a description. I should always come straight home to post! Anyhow, the theme for the first night seems to be "places I've never been."

A couple of weeks ago, a new place called Oz Cafe had a grand opening party. They're in the same little arty-incubator-squatter complex as Tender Loving Empire, and some TLE bands played the party. I got there in time for Jared Mees and the Grown Children, whom I've seen close to 422 billion times recently. They have the plastic-carrying-case glockenspiel that is more Portlandy than having a Keep Portland Weird! sticker on your car that you never drive because oh my god how gauche, everyone would know you own a car, so you just ride that bicycle and wish it had a heater and a roof, because damn is it cold and wet out. The party was basically the alleyway, some pop-up tent-things, some patio heaters, and a garage door open into the space where the band was set up. It was raining, and almost snowing, and here was this crowd all bundled up and bouncing around. The tentmoshing looked a little worrisome, but otherwise it was great fun. As usual, JM&tGC was all broken-geek-squawk vocals over a meta-tongue-in-cheek (we're not really kidding...but we might be kidding about that?) raucus banjo-violin twang. Interestingly, I'm not sure if I missed this before or if it's a new element, but The Boyfriend noticed occasional prominent bits of The Hold Steady bubbling up like crude oil or sewage or something dark and ripe and maybe a bit dangerous. Nice!

So then the debate started. Do we stick around for Boy Eats Drum Machine, whom we've never seen, or do we go to The Coop, where we've never been, for half a dozen bands? There were actually about nine other shows on the list of possibilities, but by the time we got out into it, it was down to a Clash song's worth of options. It was a tough call, with both of us on the fence, but we decided to head to The Coop. It's a house in NoPo, and I haven't been to a house party like that since I was underage and in college. Surprisingly, there wasn't a keg of Old Milwaukee Light with plastic cups, nor did anyone puke on my shoes (now that I'm far removed from college, confidential to I've totally forgotten your name in Minneapolis: puking on my shoes was never, ever going to get you a date...once was awkward, but twice was just off-putting). This place is a beautiful arts-and-crafts old house with low, beamed ceilings and the original, unpainted dark wood. I wanted to steal the house and take it home with me. There was a pretty remarkable lineup for a two-dollar show in someone's house--Rainy States, Reporter, Bodhi, Paper Cup Band (I'm just listing them in order...PCB wasn't so remarkable), and Southern Belle. Sadly, we missed Rainy States and Reporter. I haven't seen Reporter since they were Wet Confetti, and I keep hearing they're remarkably different now. Oh well. Can't win 'em all, especially in a multivenue night. Got there during Bodhi's set. They had fun playfully mimicking everyone in your CD collection (including that stuff you keep in a shoebox so no one will know). The Doors, Bowie, Modest Mouse, the Velvet Underground, Southern Culture On the Skids, surfpunk, Meatloaf, britpunk, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, mid-century senior-prom swing-lite, and cheesy organ-heavy monster-music novelty rock, blended together but left all chunky, like it was set to "chop," not "puree." Echoey, loud, weird, dramatic, and fun. This was followed up by Paper Cup Band, from Minneapolis. Despite their foreign-land status, a bunch of people there sang along. What was the underwater basketball bit? Everyone seemed to know it, even though the words never appeared in the song. Google was, for once, no help. Anyhow, a few moments of very early Replacements (and at least as drunk), but no one can keep up that reckless genius for long. Songs that referenced Paul McCartney and lice. A screamed cover of Yellow Submarine. A little more surfpunk, Dick Dale-style. And a healthy dose of The Dead Milkmen. They were awful, and really just sucked, yet I kind of enjoyed it. And if one of them goes on to be Paul Westerberg, I can say I knew 'em when. I asked one of them about his t-shirt, and he tried to convince me I should move back to Minneapolis. Oh, and that I could die tomorrow. Thanks for that reminder of my own fragility and mortality, really. Finally, Southern Belle. I heard a hell of a lot of early-early careening-crazy Modest Mouse in this one (I've said this about them before). One of them even sounds a lot like Isaac Brock. They don't have his gift for messy poetry, but who does? What they have instead is a keyboard set to Hammond B-3.

Last show on the list: The Crystal Ballroom's birthday party. I've been before (and reviewed it before). This year, I missed the tour, heard a bit of Rock and Roll Camp For Girls' All-Star show (good, if not my style...too fluttery and flourished, vocally), missed tween-rocksters Still Pending (does one of their parents work for the McMenamins empire?), missed lots of other stuff, saw Greensky Bluegrass (twangy '70s hippie cliched shit...seemed like a good time to get some dinner). Tasted some wines. The Boyfriend liked the sparkling wine, but I had just brushed my teeth and thought it tasted atrocious. The White Rabbit blend and the Merlot seemed unremarkable to me. The Pinot Noir, however, I loved. It was earthy and dry-leaf-y and interesting. Tasted some liquors, and had a long, interesting conversation with the head distiller. Hogshead Whiskey, Pear Brandy, Edgefield Brandy, and Coffee Liqueur (lovely, not-too-sweet, dangerous as hell). Tasted some beers. The nut-brown was kind of boring, and the IPA was pretty nice, and smelled gorgeous, like hop perfume. Last up, Blue Giant! Second time I've seen 'em, and they just rock my socks off. Seriously, I end up barefoot and astounded. It's totally my nemesis, Americana Rock, but damn. Nearly all their songs sound like lost covers of Loretta Lynn or The Carpenters (but rocked out like mad) or...shit, I don't even know this Americana stuff well enough to list the rest of those things I heard. I've fallen in love with and half-memorized a bunch of these songs I've heard once before. You keep shooting at my target heart... Once my love is gone, it's gone for good... Sometimes there was a pedal steel. Sometimes there were two banjos. Sometimes there was an upright bass. One question, though: Why is Chris Funk always dressed like one of the Blues Brothers? Regardless, I went home happy, and not just because of all the free alcohol.

Last Grasp

I saw two shows a long, long time ago, before all that holiday shit got in the way. Picture my hand reaching out and grasping at the last wisps of memories of these shows, before they're entirely forgotten. I think both were in early December. First, I went to the Doug Fir for a six-buck show just to see (wait for it...) the opening band! Seriously, I got my butt there by 9:05, and atypically for DF, they hadn't even started yet. It was to see Swim Swam Swum, so clearly a worthy opening band to actually make it to the show for. I always forget that Nice Girl Guy is in Swim Swam Swum, which is totally awkward. There are, like, 14 people milling around the DF (including the members of the band), and if I want to avoid a conversation, I've gotta go sit in the little hidden alley behind the bar. Clearly, I'm not the only one in town that regularly misses the opening band. Now that I've determined that a pretty significant percentage of Portland bands (55%? 70%? More?) have gotta be influenced by Half Japanese, I'm just listening for it when I go out and hear that bouncy geek-punk sound. Swim Swam Swum's vocalist must hit 97% on the Half-Jap meter. I dare you to find someone in Portland that sounds more like Jad Fair. Hell, if you can find anyone in any city that sounds more like him, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. They were great, as always, and made me want to pogo around the room, but true to form, I sat on my stool and flipped through the Merc instead. They were followed by Carcrashlander. The name did not inspire confidence. They weren't bad, per se, they just weren't my thing. There's probably someone I'd totally recommend them to, because they were great at what they did. It's just that what they did was this mostly dark, minor, downtempo, proggy, keyboard-heavy, vox-light stuff that was primarily psychedelic and occasionally reminiscent of Pink Floyd. No, really, thanks...but no. As I was only there for the opener anyway, I didn't stick it out through Carcrashlander to hear Wow & Flutter. They've been around for a while now, and play a lot, and I really ought to hear them. Just not this night.

The other show I went to in December was (leave me alone, even Obscure Music Snob has to do things like this sometimes) Vampire Weekend. I knew the three radio singles, fun jangly-bouncy stuck-in-your-head-for-days gems, and The Boyfriend wanted to go, and I thought it would just be joyful and likeable. It was a radio-station show, so it started early, one opener, then the headliner. We got there about 8:30, what should have been the midst of the opening band, and as we were walking up the stairs, I wondered why they were playing the song from the ipod commercial. No, not a cool-esque silhouettes-dancing ipod commercial, but the one for the ipod in colors. It wasn't the sound system. It was the opening band. They're called Chairlift. They seem to be one-hit-wonder-ready major-key electro, sounding a bit like The Postal Service with a girl vocalist and a lobotomy. The vocalist with her straight-bangs straight hair looked like a nine-year-old girl. And danced like a nine-year-old girl well before that adolescent self-conscious stage, spinning in circles so her hair twirled out whenever she wasn't singing. Anyhow, the saccharine-sweet commercial song probably faded out into a song about how cute and magic rainbow unicorn ponies are. The remaining 15 minutes of this band were interminable. Then Vampire Weekend started. Three minutes in, I turned to The Boyfriend and said, astounded and baffled, "It's Graceland-era Paul Simon?!? With the Ladysmith Black Mambazo sounds and everything?!" His response: "Of course, totally, didn't I play this for you?" It was fun, and bouncy, and everything I expected, except that I didn't expect the Paul Simon, which was really distracting. I mean, how can last week's alternadarlings sound like aging-boomer lite-pop circa 1987? But I tried to forget about that conundrum, and occasionally succeeded, and they were fun to dance to (uh...bob my head to).

I did some very fun non-music things in late November. There was a tour of Clear Creek Distillery that was a terrible idea, considering how bad I am at drinking liquor, but that I remember remarkably clearly, in retrospect. Comparative grappa tasting, pear brandy, eaux de vie galore, a good time was had by all. The very next day, we went out wine tasting (Thanksgiving weekend, all the wineries and vineyards are always open, often with expensive events, but sometimes just for a few bucks and the hopes we'll buy a bottle) in the northern Willamette Valley. Four wineries, some lovely wines, some beautiful views of the sun over low fog in the hills and valleys, a great time.

It's now January, and depressingly, I'm on call. I haven't been out to a show yet this month, thanks to being on call, The Boyfriend being sick, and not a lot of interest going on. I'm looking forward to expanding my horizons, though, thanks to the brand-spanking-new, January 1 smoking ban in every. single. bar in Oregon. Sadly, Towne Lounge went out of business in October, because they were #1 with a bullet on my list of places I'd like to hang out after the smoking ban. But as always, I'll keep you updated on what I accomplish (and probably keep quiet about what I don't).

Oh, To Be Wanted, To Be Useful

Got a lot to catch up on. Been a busy week or so for music. I'm pretty sure it was just last weekend I went to see Ross And The Hellpets. Not an auspicious name, by any means. And it was in the smoky basement of an Ethiopian restaurant. But I know who Ross is, and my showgoing companion is friends with the guy. And it was free. So why the Bert not? The bassist was some chick in tights wearing little satin horns. Oh dear. But not only didn't they suck, but it was actually a pretty good show. They launched into the first song, and I said, "wow, they sound like Neutral Milk Hotel circa 1999!" I got one of those blank looks that says there's something I'm not getting. "You know he used to play with NMH, right?" Holy shit, well, that's cool. (Wiki says that was in 1994. How do you ask someone, "Tell me about Jeff Mangum!" yet not sound like everyone else who's ever asked that?) Except for that one song that somehow spanned some heretofore unknown The Knack-Doors axis, the rest was all the best parts of indie radio, 1999. Along with NMH, there was Sleater-Kinney (one of the ones she sang), several Minneapolis bands, and things I've since forgotten but I'd sound cool name-checking.

The same weekend, I went to Nick Jaina's CD release party at the Doug Fir. The show started with Israel Nebbeker of Blind Pilot. He had some interesting recorded bits he mixed in with himself, like harmonica, or an old guy talking about something that sounded like it was part of some sort of project for the Smithsonian or for PBS. He had a voice I liked, and reminded me of a few musicians I like, but wasn't distinctive enough to hint to me who I thought he reminded me of. Earnest, and often a little too singer-songwritery for me. I'd love to hear Blind Pilot, though. I think I might have seen them at PDX Pop Now!, but I sorta remember not remembering them. Tu Fawning was next. They were remarkably orchestral for four people on stage, just all sorts of sound and swells and tremolo. The musicians switched places and instruments nearly every song. They were weirdly stylized (not just musically, but visually...and terribly mismatched on that front, each presenting a unique, stylized look from a different era), but possibly worthwhile. I heard some Stevie Nicks and some Portishead in there, and there was a harmonium, which is like a calling card for awesome. Nick was up last. He did mostly new stuff, which I really enjoyed because I've been listening to the new disc a ton, and I've developed a bond with those songs (though he's been playing some of them for quite a while, so I knew them anyway). But he played Maybe Cocaine and maybe one or two others, and that was it for old stuff. Too bad. But I really loved the show, as always. What I wanna know is, who wears a fedora out to the DF? Weird enough if it's on a guy's head, but on this chick, it looked like it should come with a cane, and a leotard that looks like a tuxedo, and tap shoes. The audition for A Chorus Line is somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away. Ah, schadenfreude. At least when I'm being ridiculous, I'm having fun. The dour and costumed out there just amuse me.

And then there was this benefit for cancer...wait no. Against cancer? That makes more sense. Benefit against cancer. At least I hope so. It was at the Doug Fir, and was headlined by frickin' Menomena. The last time they played the DF, two years ago, they had to make it a secret show (it was a rehearsal for their actual CD release show at the Crystal), and it was still sold out early and packed to the gills. And there was cake, but that's another matter entirely. Mmmm....cake.... Anyhow, there were no advance ticket sales for this show. I wanted to take someone to this show for his birthday. I cleared my whole damn schedule for the day (okay, full disclosure, it was a Sunday, my schedule involved figuring out how my breakfast could combine eggs, cheese, and smoked meat of some sort, then maybe throwing in some laundry) so I could troll by the DF obsessively every 30 minutes or so, watching to see if a line developed. Thank you, Portlanders, for considering eagerness to be crass and gauche, a trait best left to those cities where people wear hairspray and don't consider jeans appropriate for the symphony. (Have I mentioned I love this place?) Anyhow, I ran some errands that conveniently took me up and down Burnside...and up and down Burnside, and up and down...until finally, about 5:30, I decided to take up residence in the DF bar. Hooray for Sunday happy hours! A leisurely pint and a bowl of salmon chowder later, people finally started lining up at the box office, and I joined in. All told, I only spent about half an hour outside.

The show started with Tractor Operator. I'd heard great things, and somehow missed seeing them for probably three years solid. They were pretty good. They kinda suffered from the "everybody in Portland" syndrome, with some buzzy vocals over melodic, major-key punk-lite, but I liked his voice, and he had some pretty clever turns of phrase in the lyrics. It was kind of the omnipresent Portland geek-punk, but with the occasional foray into 3/4 time. Interestingly, there were half a dozen artists drawing the band as they played, and these drawings were auctioned off during the next set, as part of this hopefully anti-cancer benefit. Between sets, I checked out the merch table. The next band up (bandle, really--one guy and a bunch of stuff) was Eluvium (Elysian + Effluvium?), and they had some CDs out. They had those "Hey, reviews! We're cool enough to get reviewed!" stickers on the CDs, and somebody (probably some blogger...hey, wouldn't it be awesome if bands started quoting me? Oh, damn...I'd be all sarcastic, and then they'd have to quote Obscure Music Snob...oh well, I didn't need the pressure anyway) had described him as "ambient indieman" somethingorother stuff. I was filled with cold, clammy dread. Furthermore, the next quote said he would "bring you to tears." I don't want to be in tears! The first song started out looping new sounds every few moments, subtly building complexity...and went on for 9 1/2 hours. If this is going to bring me to tears, it's only because, sorta like the Rorschach, it's so blank and empty of inherent meaning that I have to project my own things onto it, and I must be filled with OVERWHELMING SEARING PAIN, so much hurt, so incredibly...sob...you don't understand...oh, wait. Sorry about that. Obviously channeling that reviewer who was brought to tears. The next track was keyboard-heavy and repetitive, like the department store piano player at Christmas that you tease with a measly dollar bill, watching his eyes get big as you get near the bowl, and then, just to be cruel, you request...Linus and Lucy. And grin broadly as his face crumples. I'm not the only one that does that, right? Uh...right? Anyhow, fourteen days later, this song evolved into basically a variation on Pachybel's Canon in D. Turns out I'm not the only one that hates that piece with every fiber of my being. And then I lost interest. Talked with the Birthday Boy about crushing the hopes and dreams of department-store Christmas piano players, and waited for the next band. The next "set" was split between Laura Gibson and Delorean. Laura Gibson really could bring someone to tears. Not me, I'm made of stone and schadenfreude, but someone. Her voice is just unbelievably beautiful, simple, and effortless, and she sings songs I can only describe as lullabyes for grown-ups. Maybe if I were better medicated I'd love her, but as it is, I appreciate her and respect her like all hell. Delorean has a song on an early PDX Pop Now! comp, and I like it. Hummable and cute. Fuzz-americana-twang with a Portlandy lo-fi broken quality. Years later, on stage, all that's left is the americana-twang, with some cringe-inducing 70s lite-rock elements. Such incredible cheese. Sample lyric: "Can't get my mind off you...there's too much sand in my shoes...beachcomber blues!" You think I made that up to make fun of them, don't you? Joke's on you, 'cause I totally didn't. The vocalist kept trying to be Dylan, and failing beyond belief. To my credit, I did not once shout out loud, "YOU'RE NOT DYLAN!" They did a Willie Nelson cover that reminded me why all country music, even Willie Nelson, sucks ass. They covered the (thank you, google) Dan Fogerty...um...classic?...Leader Of The Band. Shit...I'm a sucker for a stupid cover. I enjoyed that. They referenced the Grateful Dead (sorry, Birthday Boy, but...gag, wretch, convulse), then finished a song (and the set) with a few lines from a Dead song. And it's over, and as the last notes fade out, it's like a chorus of angels replace them, singing, "you never have to go see them again, OMS, you're safe and free..."

And then Menomena. Two notes in, and I realized there isn't a better live band in Portland. I was soaked through with those deep, pulsing, complex beats, wrapped in the twinkling keyboards like a bubble bath, lifted out of my compulsively nurtured shell of sarcasm by that beautiful and ridiculous bari sax, confused to the point of epiphany by the lyrics...utter rapture. And I lost myself, tapping my foot and bobbing my head at the same time, I sang along to myself, oh, to be wanted, to be useful, oh to be a machine...

The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald

November struck last weekend, and winter has set in in Portland. It's been raining since Halloween, with one break (more to come on that), and it makes me tired, disoriented, grumpy, and frickin' bored. It's like all the color is gone from everything when the skies turn grey, and I never know where the sun is. Today at noon, I looked at my watch and was astounded that it wasn't going on evening. A perfect time to get my sensory stimulation from live music! 'Cause I need to be getting it somewhere, and the outside world just doesn't have much to offer.

Last weekend, I went to see a collection of those Portland bands that have been around and have played shows for years, and I may or may not have been to see, or I may just miss all the time. Matt Sheehy, The Dimes, and Derby at the Doug Fir. Last time Matt Sheehy played at the DF, I missed a bunch of the set thanks to some obnoxious trailer-park bachelorette party Gresham chicks who thought, "gee, this is our one chance to do something hipster-cool. We can tell our grandkids." So they giggled and squealed and made all sorts of noise, then tried to start a bar fight with me, former pacifist turned quiet pragmatist. (No, don't worry, I don't mean I think I'm quiet, just that my pragmatism is...and would never lead to a bar fight.) So this time, I finally got to hear the actual music. Lovely, often whispery, a bit too strum-folk detailed and pretty for my tastes. I would have loved this stuff in 1993. Not that it sounds like '93--more like Sufjan Stevens, or occasionally John Vanderslice on too much lithium. The crowd was still too loud. Sheehy himself was in his stocking feet (and the omnipresent Portland vintage skinny-cowboy shirt with the pearl snaps...where can I get me one?). His bandmate had a (seriously?) Cary Elwes mustache that was utterly ridiculous. The "drums" were provided by Sheehy pounding on his (plastic-backed) acoustic guitar, then looping the sound. The Dimes up next. It was their EP release show, apparently. There was some noticeable twang going on, about which I am generally seriously conflicted. I mean, I hate most americana-twang, but there was lap steel. I can't help it...I love lap-steel guitar. And they tried for Neil Young harmonica, but it was like the elementary-school version. Overall, really, was either too twangy or too poppy (there was what could have been a lost DCFC song, but if live you sound like DCFC does recorded (they rock out live), then recorded, you've gotta sound like that guy who used to teach oil painting on PBS...zzzzzz....). They did a John Lennon cover (Watching The Wheels...something about no longer riding on the merry go round, which sounded nice, I'd love to get off the damn merry go round) that worked out pretty well. Finally, Derby. Some Boomtown Rats, some Blur (especially in the fashion sense department), nothing notably gotta-see-again. I'm looking at my scribbled notes on the back of a Trader Joe's receipt, and all I managed to write was "okay-looking alt-rock." Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

This weekend, the sun came out for about three hours. I spent it in the Chinese Garden with someone who also appreciated it, and then we went to the teahouse. Serious renewal from November funk, right there. It was complete, dark night by 5:30, but by then we were cooking a lovely pork-and-apples, mushrooms-and-pasta dinner. I can't say I love winter, but I do love the battle against it, with hearty food and good drink and the celebration of the few good outdoor moments. All we needed was a raging fire.

Which brings me to tonight's show. A raging fire in the fireplace at rontoms! I smelled it from the sidewalk. And then I walked in at 9:40 for a show listed as starting at 9:30...and caught the last half of the last song from the opener. Damn you! It's not even my fault I missed the Opening Band this time! Just as I had figured from the myspace-page bits I listened to before the show, Ben Somethingorother (it was like Ben Mycoculture or something...it's been kind of a mushroomy weekend) sounded a lot vocally like Conor Oberst, with the high-tenor buzzy, broken-cracking wail that pulls at me, but I don't know yet if he's got the lyrical interest to support it. Maybe I'll just go out and buy some discs to fill in my far-too-sparse Bright Eyes collection instead. Followed by a band called Nomenclature. That's almost as cool as REM calling that early album Eponymous. They looked totally Portland, with their HUUUUUUGE geek glasses and pasty dorkiness, and I developed stories about both of them. The one on the right is a competitive juggler, and worried that if he went on tour his girlfriend would leave him for someone with more status in World of Warcraft. The one on the left has 3/4 of a degree in statistical theory and is working on actuarial tables for guitar strings. But they were from Georgia. Two guys, one pounding drums and the other crunching bass with buzz and fuzz and other fun effects, and then one of them would flip the switch for the other sounds like washed-out wordless choir and fuzzy, dampened strings. It was interesting, intriguing, bone-shaking, charming, fun, major-key and melodic....it was messy and everything all at once and I loved it. They snuck in some fiddle-twang, recorded for the synth to reproduce, but mostly just fun crazy-indie-rock. Thanks, Georgia! Last up, Jared Mees and the Grown Children. Now that I've described them so succinctly in the past, all I hear is the autistic indie-punk of Half-Japanese melded with the southern-twang of Wilco or the country-punk of the Replacements. Words influencing perception as well as describing it. They were constantly about to derail but never quite did. And suddenly everyone in Portland has one of those xylophones (glockenspiels? I don't know the difference) in the little plastic case that looks like a toy laptop.

On the drive home, the Novemberiness of the week was highlighted beautifully (okay, ridiculously) by finding a radio station playing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Maudlin, tacky, chilly, about a ship on Lake Superior (Hi, Duluth!) shipwrecked in a November storm. A hilarious end to a fun November weekend.

Places I've Never Been

I've managed to cram three shows into about a week. Go me!

Sunday of last week, I went to see a show at rontoms. I'd been there once, but never inside and never for a show, so I'm counting it as a Place I've Never Been. And you can't stop me. So there. Alan Singley and Pants Machine started off. I've seen them a few dozen times or so. There's always been some variation in lineup, from solo Alan to the core three (with Gus and Leb) to a lineup of many. But this time was different, for some reason. First off, there was a female backup vocalist, which I've never seen them do. Mostly successful, which is pretty amazing given how difficult it must be to harmonize with Alan's off-key squawk. A few moments when it just didn't mesh well. Also, a viola and a sax, working together in one corner, adding some sort of genuine gravitas (only a little, but still) to the goofball. New directions, new songs, and reportedly a new disc on the way...

(And also new hair: Leb Borgerson used to have a bad feathered haircut, but it made him look like a young Kenneth Branagh. The new hair leans more toward Luke Skywalker circa Empire Strikes Back. Not an improvement.)

They were followed by Blue Cranes. There's a song on the current PDX Pop Now! compilation, but I didn't think to listen to it before I went to the show. To my surprise, they were the good type of modern indie-rock-influenced jazz! (Yes, there is a good version, so shut up.) Ornette-Coleman-sounding bits, a Sufjian Stevens cover, but all genuine jazz. Two super-patinated old saxes, accordion, upright bass, drums, and keyboards. More than anything, they reminded me of Happy Apple. Classic jazz played by people with deep-rooted indie-rock sensibilities that come through like a bay leaf. Not wildly prominent, but just adding a little hard-to-define something underneath. Really gorgeous stuff, and I was pretty mesmerized.

Then last Thursday I saw a four-band lineup at Holocene. A four-band lineup on a weeknight is never a good idea. Showed up at a bar just in time to see the very last out of game two of the World Series (I'll give a belated Go Rays! here, and I wanna say "there's always next year," but I'm pretty sure this was their one and only chance), then had a lovely dinner of beef short ribs and mashed sweet potatoes. I love it when I tell someone, "you've had a hard day, let me take you out to dinner." Because the added bonus there is that I take me out to dinner, too! Confusing arrangement at Holocene--the available info said 8:30, but is that doors, or show? We got there about 10 to find that doors were at 8, show was at 9...huh? We missed Vandeveer, but I hadn't heard of them, and they were, of course, the Opening Band. And I never see the Opening Band. They were followed up by These United States, who vacillated between pretty damn good Replacements-era punk-with-a-country-backbeat and distasteful '70s-throwback hippie-twang-rawk. I was wildly ambivalent. Next up, Nick Jaina. A comparatively small six-person band, some new songs, and the old songs, as always, made new again. You know I'm always amazed by Nick and crew, but being able to sound fresh and different after coming home from a cross-country tour generates another level of amazed. Finally, Chris Robley. And the Fear Of Heights? I can't remember. It was a full band, anyhow. I know he plays solo, plays as CR&tFOH, leads The Sort Ofs, plays (guitar?) in Norfolk & Western...the Portland music scene is like that weird branch of the Mormon church. Everybody's got half a dozen bands, and everyone's related to everyone else and their bands, so that if any bands wanted to get married and have little bands, the little bands would have three heads. Anyhow, I want to like Chris Robley. The music appeals to me, the lyrics are complex and story-like and interesting, it's all pretty great...but there are times when Chris Robley slips into that rawk voice. You know, the metal-ballad voice, all throaty with the vibrato and the words with the excessive syllables, like "one" coming out as "woah-oh-un". I would love this band except for the rawk voice. But I was out with someone who adores the various Chris Robley permutations, and though we were both very tired, his joy was infectious.

Last up, on Saturday I finally made it to the Roseland. The goal was seeing Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The...uh...bonus (?) was Against Me. I've never been to the Roseland, thanks to its preponderance of hip-hop and kid-punk shows. This was definitely the latter. There was this weird rigamarole where I had to go through a metal detector, but I had my keys in my hand, and no one seemed to want to take them from me. So I'm basically holding my metal out in front of me as I walk through. I show my keys to someone (see, I have metal!), my friend had to empty his pockets. We then head upstairs and discover we're a few songs into Ted Leo's set already. I don't really know the music, but it's high-energy melodic old-skool punk. Clash-like, maybe? They were political and vegan, and it was fun watching the crowd of high school kids confused by things like "this next song's about the CIA!" "Um...whoohoo?" What I wanna know is, where the hell did these kids learn to mosh? Moshing isn't running at people so you can shove them. It's not safe if people each have several feet to run around in, and good moshing shouldn't involve running around like that. I'm pretty sure we've reached the point where moshing needs to be taught in dance studios, like the foxtrot, because it's clearly a lost art. Damn kids...get off my lawn! Anyhow, this was followed up by Against Me (or perhaps Against Me!, I forget). I knew going in that it was punk for kids, silly rabbit. I expected total thrash, and wasn't entirely wrong, but there were some bits that could be hummed later, were one inclined to do so, so it actually wasn't quite as bad as I expected. In good news, the mosh pit tightened enough for some short-lived crowd-surfing, so clearly they were doing something right. But overall, loud as all fuck and dully repetitive, so we took off early to go to a birthday party with lovely cake and good beer, and curried apple-squash something-or-other, and a bonfire. And a crazy guy from down the street, but that's neither here nor there. A pretty good time was had by all, and a few stolen pears mean ongoing enjoyment from the evening! Poached, or pie? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of pie-crust tyranny, or to poach, perhaps to dream...

Happy Birthday To Me...

Woke up on my birthday and went to work. Saw my clients, went to my meetings, and on top of that, put together all the information I'd need to be grilled in court the next day by six lawyers and a court-appointed advocate. Sometimes my job is...(redacted). I mean, awesome!

Went home, changed clothes, and got taken out to dinner. At Higgins. Holy smoked fish, Batman! We just went and ate in the bar, but I've never even done that. Serious birthday pampering. And then off to Backspace. That was the goal for the evening. Dinner was like, "Where do you wanna go, OMS?" "I dunno." "How about Higgins?" "Uh...hell yeah, that'll do nicely!" But the real plan was to go out to Backspace.

Got there about 15 minutes into Norfolk & Western's set. These guys spent a few years with the same modus operandi. Wildly charming, elaborate artsy-detailed '30s-influenced down-home indie twang-folk. Every show involved a gramaphone and a fedora. And then they went on this crazy-ass evolution binge. Like fruit flies or something. I saw them at PDX Pop Now! in August, and they just tore shit up. There was a fucking mosh pit. For what had been a twang-folk band! Rawk all over the place, with barely a twang to be seen (uh...heard). This show split the difference beautifully. Most songs began with a cute, swingy art-folk start, and a slow build in intensity, until all at once, KABLOOEY! I mean, sure, it wasn't really 'kablooey' (that sounds like a terrible, tragic bubble-gum accident), but there's just no onomotopoeic word that accurately reflects what goes on when the electro-acousto-guitar-drums-bass-everything comes crashing in, sending the whole production spiraling off into raucous country-rawk territory...but not stupid or ugly. Just transcendent. Oh, and JFC, there was a Velvet Underground cover! I mean, for all the zillions of bands that pretentiously claim the VU as an influence, there are far too few VU covers. Lovely.

And then, the reason we were there: Blue Giant. Officially a Viva Voce side project, but aside from Kevin and Anita (on two guitars, or a banjo, harmonica, and dual vox), there were...oh, damn. This is why I take notes! I can remember at least four other people on stage, but that doesn't seem like enough. A (I assume) regular drummer, plus Rachel Blumberg of N&W also playing along (two drummers = kick fucking ass), Chris Funk of The Decemberists on banjo, keyboard, and pedal steel (a-berting-mazing), plus a bassist/keyboardist. And that was plenty, sure. This was southern country-rawk with the kind of playful touch that made me like it. I was a couple of songs into this set when I realized I was seeing a double-bill of bands that could be described as Americana. I hate Americana in any form. Yet, two songs into the BG set, I couldn't maintain the "I'm only enjoying the irony aspect" smirk. This was post-irony. This was meta-irony. This was the musicians seeing the ironic potential, and somehow transmogrifying it into pure joy. The joy may have been fueled by ironic appreciation, but it was transformed in the "shit, we've got two banjos! And pedal steel!" process into gold. They made jokes about being on "tour" of Portland (three venues in three days, and gee, the road sure is hard, anyone got a couch they could crash on?), then said that for every stop on their three-day tour, a local musician would join them for a few songs, all covers. Hi, Sam Coomes of Quasi! Come on up! Holy shit. Suddenly all Americana, all twang, all country-rawk-whatever, all was destroyed in the pure, blue-white fire that ensued. I recognized the first song as classic rock of some sort, plus (again, the perils of blogging a week later) two or three more that were more obscure but found some inexplicable classicrawk-punk-screamingloudindierock nexus that heretofore didn't exist except perhaps in legend or myth. A google search provides me with The Who's Hell Or High Water as one of Mr. Coomes' choices. Blistering, all of them.

And then we all went home, drunk on local fresh-hop-harvest Ninkasi beer out of oversized bottles, tired and happy. Or, at least, I did, and I want everyone in the sparsely attended room (maybe 75 folks in a room that holds 150) to have enjoyed themselves just as much. And in my case, with an astounding birthday-present re-issue to look forward to of the very first Replacements disc, Sorry, Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. And probably another couple of birthday presents before I finally fell asleep.

Thank you to everyone who made my birthday stellar, from whoever smoked the fish to the Ninkasi folks to all the musicians in both bands, and especially to the orchestrator who decided I was going to have such a lovely birthday. I didn't stop grinning until I went through the metal detector at court the next day. Squee!

All Experimental and Punk and Shit

I'm honestly not sure what I saw last night. Except that I know it was the wrong end of the lineup for The Artistery's 7th anniversary party. I did get a burger and some cookies (plus some vegan "German potato salad" that, duh, lacked bacon, which was unfortunate enough, but since when is vinegar an animal product?). I think the lineup started with Why I Must Be Careful, which was almost kind of cool atonal-experimental jazz-fusion....zzzzzzzz. It actually failed at being grating enough to not be boring after about ten minutes. Luckily, they only played for about 20 minutes, which was the running theme for the show. There might have been another band in here...I can't remember for certain. Next up was White Fang, a self-indulgent hardcore-punk band amusingly injected with the unavoidable Portland dork-punk bits. It's in the water here, I swear. Dear White Fang fans: A mosh pit is characterized by vertical, not horizontal, movement. Thanks much, OMS. White Fang was lots of fun for their 20-minute set, but truthfully, I don't think I'd like them as much in intervals any longer than that. I'm pretty sure the other band I saw was Owl Dudes. Weird-ass shit that inhabited the space exactly halfway between horrifying white-boy rap-metal and pretentious (yet horrifying) spoken word experimental performance art. It was actually intriguing for a few moments, but not much longer. There were quite a few more sets before we'd have gotten to see the stuff I was actually interested in (Rob Walmart is supposed to be....well, the best of this bizarro stuff, so that might have been worth seeing; Nick Delffs of Shaky Hands has a pretty fascinating voice; and I love Point Juncture, WA), so it was off to play bar shuffleboard and drink interesting beer instead.

I hope to go to a show I absolutely and for certain want to be at again soon....