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National
Renown With the delicate opening of their new album, Alligator, The National sets the stage for their tale-spinning frontman. "I'm sorry I missed you / I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain," Matt Berninger croons, his voice deeper than is the norm in most (rather effete) indie rock circles. Surrounded by spare arrangements, clear piano melodies, precise percussion and the occasional group-plus-friends chorus, Berninger roots The National's songs firmly in something murky and dark — but dark in the way a room lit only by candles is dark. On their fourth album, the band's put together something that glows.
The unexpected thing about this imaginative, intimate quintet is the way they sometimes — as with the guitar-laden "Lit Up" — veer onto ground more often covered by big, anthemic rock bands. But they do it in small steps, with a light hand, letting the music soar while Berninger's throaty, tired voice tells stories about wayward souls and uncertain futures. Strangely enough, it works: Let's call it dynamic stadium pop for small settings. The National are on tour with the frightfully hyped Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who write the sort of squirrelly, energetic tunes that make you believe the reviews that say they're exceptionally great live. On first listen, there's an oft-noted Talking Heads influence in the jittery guitars, and a hard-to-pin-down, familiar tone to singer Alex Ounsworth's meandering vocals. But the '80s jangle butts heads with an exuberant free-for-all sound that brings in toy pianos and opens the album with a carnivalesque organ and ringmaster chant. "Clap your hands!" exhorts Ounsworth, while the rest of the band complains, "But it won't do nothing!" "Details of the War" gets out a harmonica and builds slowly through unsettling images; "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" follows with a dancey little drumbeat that shakes off any residual gloom. What these bands share, despite their different sounds, is a perceptible joy in what they're doing. The National aren't afraid to let their songs swell with uplifting, hope-filled choruses; CYHSY natter on like there's nothing they'd rather be doing but spastic dances across the stage (this music practically requires that the singer be a little twitchy). Even for one's internal cynic, it's hard to fault a joyful band like CYHSY for their massive hype; they aren't exactly breaking new ground, but they're breaking a few old, tired trends. And three cheers for that.
Forbidden
Love It's funny how a rough performance can build a young band's character. After Amish Love Child's first performance back in 2003, the band knew it would take a lot more work to become the live show it hoped to be. Practices became more frequent, lead singer Troy Krusenstjerna took singing lessons and the band gradually became more confident. "I think we're at the point right now where we can get in front of people and put on a good show," says Krusenstjerna.
The band, Krusenstjerna, bassist Tony Gilchriest and drummer Bob Becker, describe the end result as "alternative music for the working class." Amish Love Child's self-titled full length debut is a 12-song combination of acoustic and electric, influenced by '60s pop and '70s punk but with a calmer, almost country delivery. Its content ranges from working class hardships to sadder break-up songs. Songs like "I Don't Wanna Work" and "Paycheck to Paycheck" show the workingman side of Amish Love Child. During more typically morose songs a sense of mockery brings uniqueness to songs like "PBR Vacation" and "Cellphone." A drawn out metaphor regarding why Pabst's Blue Ribbon is so blue definitely adds a sense of playfulness to the despair facing the song's main character. "I think generally you can't take things too seriously," says Krusenstjerna. "If you do you're going to end up writing songs that sound like suicide notes or something." Other parts of the album are quite upbeat. The first song, "Things," is a rallying, concerned message to a friend who's down. Ultimately, the product is a relaxing, relevant collection of anthems for and about the common man (and woman). And while it took a lot of work to get to the point where the band could write and record this album, barely a year after that first substandard live show, Amish Love Child still believes its bread and butter comes from performing. "We've just been plugging away at it," said Gilchriest. "I think that kind of comes with experience. We try to work on playing tighter shows and having good interaction with the audience." Now Amish Love Child hopes to get the final product on the road as soon as possible. "If we could be making money and hearing our songs on the radio and playing out of town, then that's our goal," says Krusenstjerna.
Art
Music We live, it's said, in a visual age. You know, video killed the radio star and all that. But when you can easily hear almost any music at home with only a few keystrokes, sometimes it takes more than watching musicians play their instruments to draw a crowd. That's why I welcome experiments in adding visual elements to music, as Luna is doing at 10 pm on Thursdays this month. And if you get there early, you can also hear a jazz jam featuring UO music students led by composer/pianist/professor Toby Koenigsberg.
Luna's first art and music concert features The Ills, a band from Oklahoma. It's hard to think of much of musical significance to emerge from that state. Let's see, there's Flaming Lips and, oh yeah, some guy named Guthrie a long time ago. The Ills sound kinda like a jazz/electronica combo, except that acoustic instruments generate all their sounds. Elements of jazz, drum and bass, and funk along with occasional strange vocals will accompany the "interactive art" of Emmanuelle Brochier. The next installment in Luna's art and music series happens the following Thursday, Oct. 13, when one of Eugene's most exciting bands, Eleven Eyes, provides the soundtrack to the art of Dhira Lawrence. If you haven't yet caught this hot ensemble's electrifying assemblage of jazz, funk, turntables, horns and keyboards, this is an excellent opportunity. Yet another group that enhances music with visuals is Kan'Nal, a Boulder band that includes psychedelic video by DJ Videolicious and a dance troupe. Their intense gypsy-inflected guitar sounds range toward metallic territory, driven by Afro-Caribbean rhythms on percussion, and fleshed out with didgeridoo and electronic samples. Catch them at Agate Hall on Oct. 6. On Oct. 13, DIVA brings another difficult-to-describe duo, English, to town for some late-night strangeness. Trumpet/ electronics/"non-instrument" player Joe Foster played in various Portland bands until he moved a few years ago to South Korea, where he met flutist/performance artist Bonnie Jones, who was born there. Musical adventurers, check it out.
A
Band Possessed Maybe someone should tell the rednecks in Alabama who flock to hear I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In the House that lead singer and primary songwriter Mike Damron thinks Bush is a criminal, admires Ani di Franco, thinks that Christianity is a "beautiful thing that's been shit on and bastardized," and whose dream is to someday be as good a songwriter as Bruce Springsteen. He just happens to exorcise his personal demons with the fury and intensity of a possessed preacher and makes music that's an alternating mix of country, punk and rock.
If there's ever a case of "Don't judge a book by its cover" or a band by their too-long, un-media-friendly name, this is it. Damron himself points out that SOB "is not a handsome band." But in this case beauty isn't about looks, but about great music, which makes SOB pretty damn hot. Their last CD, Menace, hits hard from the beginning with "Gone," an explosive song that rocks harder than the mosh pit that forms when they play it live. The third track, "A Good Day To Be a Bad Husband," is the highlight of the CD — with a soft, rollicking country lilt juxtaposed against lyrics that are at once cutting, incredibly bitter and funny. It's a brilliant piece of music that sweetly showcases Damron's (aka Mike D) gravelly rasp as he sings blithely about flowers and murder. It's also an impressive piece of work for someone who's only been writing songs for about four years. At 41, you could say Damron is getting a relatively late start in the game of rock. "I couldn't get behind the music I was doing [for other people] any more," Damron said, talking by cell phone from Chicago. "It may take 10 years or more before I can write songs like I want. I want to be as good as Bruce Springstein or Steve Earle, I won't say Bob Dylan because that's just …" His sentence trailed off, then he added, "I want to get up to that level of competence." He said most of the songs you'll hear on any SOB record are his own "personal bullshit." And he definitely shines a spotlight onto some nightmarishly dark faces that haunt his past. "You can't just tell people to get over things," he said. "When you come from a brutal past, alcoholism, you don't just get over it." It's the connection that makes all the difference for Damron, finding people who relate to the experience and do some of their own personal healing through his music.
Inspired Mergings 13 & God is the chosen name for the musical pairing of Munich's the Notwist and Themselves, who are the central unit of Bay Area underground hip-hop collective Anticon. Melding rap and rock is usually not a good idea, sometimes yielding disastrous results: Anthrax/Public Enemy, Aerosmith/Run DMC . . . neither of these pairings were good, admit it. But take two bands that are already on the fringe, fitting uncomfortably into the cubbyholes of rock and hip hop, and the results will succeed by finding common ground in areas you didn't expect. Out in the hinterlands of collaboration there are no rules. The artists — Adam "Doseone" Drucker, Jeffery "Jel" Logan and Dax Pierson of Themselves, Martin "Console" Gretschmann and twins Markus and Micha Acher of Notwist — build on atmospheric sounds and experimental electronics though they come from very different directions. Merging hip hop and indie rock is an ambitious project, and it's not always comfortable. Drucker's machine gun rapping careens wildly off of Acher's sweetly murmured singing, but working through conflict is often the most rewarding exercise. 13 & God plays with Static Boy 9 pm at the WOW Hall, Thursday Sept. 29. $12. — Vanessa Salvia
Retro Fresh
After listening to The Gifted Program, the new release by Seattle's The Divorce, I wanted to throw on some parachute pants and head over to the local roller rink to satisfy the retro-'80s euphoria coursing through my veins. But as with The Darkness or The White Stripes, this band promises something beyond mere tongue-in-cheek retro rock. Arena-filling guitar riffs, crisp, metronomic drum beats and lip-curling vocals smack of Billy Idol and U2 references, but somehow come off sounding fresh, real and current. "We've definitely been getting the '80s comparison a lot lately," says singer, lead guitarist and keyboard player Shane Berry. "I think in this current climate where there's a lot of '80s revival, it's dangerous to bring out that sound, because people might think we're trying to be a cynical retro band or something." But whatever their influences, the band is famously driven and deadly serious about their music. A long way from their first release, 2003's There Will Be Blood Tonight, Berry says they're just happy to have this album done and into people's hands. "After working on this for so long, it's almost hard to let the baby leave home, so to speak. But that's what we're in it for." The Divorce plays 9 pm at Indigo District, Saturday Oct. 1. $2. — Dave Constantin
Parking Spot Rock First, the name: "Reserved 16" was the parking space in front of the Glendale, Calif. office storage facility where three guys worked during their high school years. The dudes would sit and eat their lunch on the curb of said parking spot. They "borrowed" the sign and started a band in 1999. Second, the dudes: Beau Wammack, 23, vocals, acoustic guitar, piano; Scott Unger, 22, drums and percussion; Ross Allcroft, 24, bass and guitar. They met in high school at their church youth group and graduated from playing school parties in Glendale to LA and Hollywood clubs The Whisky, Hard Rock Café, The Cat Club and The Knitting Factory. Third, the music: Wammack, with the singer/songwriter style he nurtured at coffeehouses, felt that "a lot of the melody and feeling that I enjoyed about acoustic guitar was being stripped away by playing songs that were dominated by your typical electric guitar power chords." Unger and Allcroft bring a rockier, punkier style to the mix. Shake, pour over ice and serve "a more energetic or edgier style of acoustic rock than you might otherwise find." Fourth, the future: With a national tour under their belts and another planned, you'll be hearing more from this band of parking sign thieves. Reserved 16 play 10 pm at Samurai Duck, Friday Sept. 30. Free. And also 9 pm at Tiny Tavern, Sunday Oct. 2. — Vanessa Salvia
A Lovely Melancholy
The songs of one-man band Summer at Shatter Creek fall into a strange and sparsely populated land between the heartfelt, soaring choruses of Jeff Buckely and the consciously weird folk-pop of musicians like Devendra Banhart. Singer-songwriter Craig Gurwich is never purposefully quirky, though, aside from the eerie a cappella bit that opens Summer at Shatter Creek's second album, All the Answers. His crystalline songs are exercises in layered vocals and simple instrumentation led by introspective lyrics and a strikingly clear voice. Admirers of the sleepy acoustic poetry of Iron & Wine might find a lot to like in Summer at Shatter Creek's plaintive ballads — while less elegant, less eloquent than Iron & Wine's Sam Beam, Gurwich is looking for the same road. On "Fall Down Drunk," Gurwich's sweet tenor reaches almost Thom Yorke-like heights over tinkling keys and a muted background of crashing cymbals. Haunted-house piano and a fuzzy filter lead into "Something to Calm Me," which, like several other songs, has a meticulous, cautious pace, as if Gurwich is holding things carefully in check. If Grandaddy's Jason Lytle shut himself up in a monastery for a few months, learning to be an ascetic, the results might sound something like this album. It's beautiful, delicate, sweetly sad and gracefully constructed, and it deserves more attention than it's getting. See for yourself when Summer at Shatter Creek plays at 9pm Monday Oct. 3 at Sam Bond's Garage. $5. —Molly Templeton
Gore à la Mode
The recipe for a great live show is as follows: Mix one part punk rock with one part sultry R&B vocals. Let stew, then shake violently and, voila! You have the Gore Gore Girls. Consume immediately. With their raucous guitar playing and hand-clappable beats, the Gore Gore Girls (named after a '70s B-horror movie) are sure to please even the most refined musical palate. Their punk, "girls kick ass" attitude adds some spice to their musical menu in the style of Sleater-Kinney or Bikini Kill, but doesn't overpower you with the cayenne pepperiness common to those and other girl punk bands. A smooth ribbon of silky R&B is also detectable in the mix, which is a surprising and yet tasty addition to the flavor. And as far as presentation goes, the Gore Gore Girls don't cut any corners. The Girls put on a live show that will definitely knock your socks off (they've proven their worth by sharing the stage with names like The Stooges, The Strokes and The Ravonettes), but isn't so rowdy that you don't want to come back for more. By the time you leave, you'll be full to bursting with their punk rock flavor. But sorry, no doggie bags. The Gore Gore Girls play 9 pm at Sam Bond's, Thursday Oct. 6. $5.— Emily Freeman
THURSDAY SEPT.
29 FRIDAY SEPT. 30
BLUE LUNA CLUB DJ Pristine & Artical Infinity—9;
Roots reggae, hip hop SATURDAY OCT. 1 SUNDAY OCT. 2
BLACK FOREST Caught-in-the-Act Karaoke—9:30 MONDAY OCT. 3 TUESDAY OCT. 4
BADA BING'S Blake Padilla, Scott Bossina &
Friends—6:30
ROCK 'N' RODEO DJ Tony T—10; Hip hop WEDNESDAY OCT. 5 CORVALLIS
Club Guide AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR 999 Willamette
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