The world seems mired in a perpetual scheming to dash you this way and that, to discard the intended path of your momentum, and leave a great big sinkhole in the road. The older you get, the more it appears that little clouds follow you around, ready to sprinkle all over your best-laid plans. And maybe that’s just the residue from a week of unseasonable rain and overcast doldrums that hit Portland in early September, well before any of us were ready for it. But that’s why having a nice stockpile of tunes to sidekick your ruminations is important—to fill in the blanks with a little perspective, to insist on the balance of struggle and personal evolution so you’re emotionally equipped to face the ceaseless march with some courage. Or at the very least with a sense of community, that you’re not facing anything truly alone.
The illuminating picks for this edition of Spin Cycle were that sonic armor for me during the past month—each little reminders of the beauty and the complexity, the resilience, and the joy that music can imbue you with as you saunter through the grind.
Happy listening!
Heaven’s Door – Lily Ire
For fans of Soft Crest, Surrogate, Mazzy Star
The songs that populate Heaven’s Door—the second album from Portland’s Lily Ire—sound lived in and fought for. Helmed by Portland songwriter Jack Spadolini, the album reflects miles logged through Portland, Los Angeles, New York City, and Santa Fe, bringing wanderlust and growing up into hazy focus over 10 dreamy tracks that are almost unfairly charming.
The album begins with the short-but-sweet foreword “Before You, An Open Door,” a zippy electro vignette that ushers in the gloomier acoustic confessional “Workhorse.” Spadolini’s songs ride epic ambitions, his wide-eyed lyrics and simple chord progressions reined in and enhanced by slow-build shoegaze. Songs like “Workhorse” threaten to continue expanding until the poetic scope of Spadolini’s observational lyricism demands breaking points.
Heaven’s Door’s secret weapon is Spadolini’s honesty, driven through curtains of distorted guitars, a tasteful rhythm section, and a willingness to mine his own mental algorithms. To wit, on “Road Rage,” Spadolini rides a sneaky-catchy vocal melody, singing, “I’m screaming at the traffic again / Minivans are giving me the finger / And I’m well-aware my anger gets a touch out of hand / I’m a man, is what my dad would always say / Now get the fuck out of my way.”
Elsewhere, the nostalgia of young love is given a tender, uncompromising bedroom-pop bath on “Jaime,” a song that blooms mid-track with an explosive post-chorus, keys and guitars coiling around Spadolini’s sleeve-worn heart. The title track has its own hooks, centered around smart tension-building over layered acoustic guitars, strong harmonies, and heavy clouds of keys.
These are songs that have traveled a long way in the physical sense, but in the emotional as well. Spadolini’s dream-pop visions have obviously been incubated through the prism of his cross-country travels, as well as through the vast acreage of empathy and curiosity he chooses not to hide.
Heaven’s Door was self-released August 14. The album is available for digital purchase via the Lily Ire Bandcamp, and an official release show is being planned for October. Details are TBD. Please visit Lily Ire’s Instagram for updates.
Barnstorm – Paul Spring
For fans of Jacco Gardner, Pat Hull, Bert Jansch
There are songs that upon first listen the losing of one’s cool is inevitable. Such was the case for me as I heard “Freeze Tag,” the opening track on Paul Spring’s latest solo LP, Barnstorm. Caressed by a Baroque-folk sheen, the song’s emotional underbelly is delivered through classical guitar arrangements, a warm backbeat, and Spring’s clever-strange lyrical acumen that dreams up lines like, “Time doesn’t fly / It chases me around like it’s fucking freeze tag / I wanna play / But I’m all alone / I got no friends here.”
The deeper you dig into Spring’s wonderful world, the weirder and more comforting it becomes. Recorded at a house in County Galway, Ireland, the Queens-based Spring tapped four Irish musicians he’d met while touring the country to perform on the album. Collectively, their sonic explorations of Bach and traditional Irish tunes are fleshed out through Spring’s outsider-folk, best heard on the title track, which uses a jaunty percussive shuffle to drive a dance party song with references to John Denver’s “Country Roads” and Eminem’s “The Way I Am,” reciprocating the kind of cultural awareness typically reserved for pop stars.
Later, “Tell Me That You Love Me” takes Spring’s falsetto vocals to loveworn depths, his sense of phrasing hypnotic over a patchwork of interlocking guitar lines. The dizzying guitar experiments continue on “Gravitron,” a beautiful track exploring the duality of Spring’s alternately complex and captivating melodic peripherals.
As the record unfurls further, “Lowliest Man” highlights Barnstorm’s Baroque leanings with a tidy song that feels at home in the greenery and mirth of an Irish pub, a street corner, or anywhere else reverent music is championed.
Barnstorm dropped August 21 on Bombadil Records. You can purchase the digital album or vinyl copy through Spring’s Bandcamp. Spring is performing in Portland October 27 at Second Story Studios (after buying tickets, you will need to RSVP to the event for the address).
Chopping Mountain – Ibibio Sound Machine
For fans of Gloria Estefan, Tune-Yards, Fela Kuti
On Chopping Mountain—the sixth LP from London’s Ibibio Sound Machine—the ensemble spins a blenderful of chunky Afro-fusion tributaries ranging from funk to soul to ambient and electronic, a panorama of sounds that shows an apt understanding of the noises that make you shake a leg or two.
Beginning with “Burning in Lagos,” a low-rider of a trippy funk track that feels at home in its homage, sax bleats are divvied through a dizzying percussive assault that tracks the band’s global inspiration, from London to Lagos and back. Commiserating on the need to groove, “Return to Sender” operates on a frequency familiar to fans of ’90s techno-dance and West Afro-beat disco milieus on an ass-shaker of a song that resists complacency. With one ear firmly in the pop-rock ’80s, splashy sax and ultra-layered percussive rhythms carve deep grooves beneath frontwoman Eno Williams’ fluid voice, an instrument all its own when she lets loose, which is almost always.
“Concept of Love” headlines the album’s dancefloor grind, merging disco-pop with Afro-fusion edges that implore stank-faced rug-cutting. “Give Me Peace” is a plea for (yes) peace, freedom, and love, with call-and-response vocals wrapped in echoes that dip in and out of a sneaky jazz beat. Pianos hover like sunrays just above a meditative bed of brass, lending the dreamy song elements of pure bliss.
As Chopping Mountain reaches its finale, “River Don’t Rush” finds the band cruising on an electro-pop head-nodder, the downbeat track bubbling in its own washed-out ambient juices while Williams’ voice guides the vibe toward cosmic reverberations. “Why worry?” she repeats, and by the time the track ends, you’ll wonder why you ever have.
Chopping Mountain drops September 11 through Merge Records. You can purchase the record as a digital copy, on vinyl, or on CD through Ibibio Sound Machine’s Bandcamp.