The still-short history of Nucular Aminals—the best new indie
pop group Portland has seen in some time—has played out in a
migratory series of domestic spaces.
Originally a trio, the band formed in 2007 in the San Francisco
studio apartment of longtime friends and songwriters Robert Comitz
(guitar and vocals) and Erin Schmith (keyboards). Due to typical urban
space constraints, Nucular Aminals (or two-thirds of it, anyway)
practiced in the apartment’s closet, while bassist Jheremy Grigsby was
forced to play seated on the toilet in the bathroom, where he was
repeatedly subjected to water-meets-electricity shocks. Understandably,
the band struck out for Portland and its spacious, band-friendly
basements, where they met drummer Wiley Hickson. Until July, they had
shared their sun-kissed, shadow-touched, post-Elephant-6 pop
confections with audiences almost exclusively at house shows.
With the succession of living spaces marking their path so far,
there is a pleasing lexical logic to the fact that Nucular Aminals have
taken a step into the world of over-ground venue gigging by way of a
residency. For the past four weeks, the foursome have played free shows
on the restaurant side of Berbati’s every Wednesday night. I spoke to
Nucular Aminals as they prepared to wrap up their Berbati’s run with
one more sanctioned show, a rare opportunity for the general public to
catch this surprisingly self-assured band display its talent—in
the tradition of Cobain, Mangum, and Pollard—for knowing just
when to stop polishing its pop and let some tarnish show.
MERCURY: Your recordings are bathed in a warm,
presumably analog distortion that’s hard to resist calling “lo-fi.”
That production aesthetic has seen a highly publicized renaissance in
the past couple of years, but Nucular Aminals seem to have a more
genuine relationship to it than many other bands. Your songwriting is
both exceptionally hooky and unabashedly sophisticated, so you clearly
aren’t trying to hide a lack of content with stylized presentation.
Moreover, your live sound is shockingly similar to your
records—delay, vocal fuzz, and all. How did you arrive at that
sound, and how central do you think it is?
NUCULAR AMINALS: We’re certainly not trying to sound as clean as
what you’d hear on mainstream radio, so in that sense it is an
aesthetic choice, but it’s something we’re still trying to work out.
The recordings we just finished for an upcoming 7-inch are definitely
cleaner. The sound has become richer as we’ve matured as a band. It’s
also not our main concern… we try to focus on making fun and
interesting songs, and let the overall sound of the band come more
naturally. I guess it’s safe to say that we’re not a crystal clear
band… it’s not a production value, it’s just how we play.
What is the deal with the antique-looking microphone Robert uses for
vocals?
The microphone is from a tank (we found out from Jesse Hall, from
Experimental Dental School). It has a louder output and a unique sound
to it that Robert appreciates. It was acquired from a trade with a
friend in Olympia for a speaker cabinet that Robert couldn’t bear to
look at anymore from a different trade that is a whole other story.
Nucular Aminals performs at Berbati’s Restaurant (19 SW 2nd) on
Wednesday, July 29.
To me, Portland indie pop begins and ends with Paper Brain.