“When I was a little kid I
made drawings of people and then drew wolf features on the other side
of the paper so that when you held them up to the light they became
werewolves,” says Brian Mumford. The enormously talented,
circuit-bending, acoustic guitar-plucking visionary of Tesla-damaged
noise-folk who has played music under the name Dragging an Ox
through Water since 2002—cites this wonderfully telling
episode from his childhood as a precedent for his proclivities as a
songwriter. As with his phantasmagorical preadolescent illustrations,
Mumford makes songs that are fundamentally double-sided, created by the
superimposition of two sets of forms.

He will begin a typical Dragging
an Ox through Water song by summoning forth a gorgeous, finger-picked
ostinato from his trebly, jury-rigged guitar, and a deep, gently
warbling melody from his chest. Just as the comfortable woodsy contours
of this sonic space begin to define themselves, they are violated by a
barrage of feedback that Mumford fires from his pedal board, or a
madcap, seemingly arrhythmic, fuzzed-out arpeggio he has covertly built
by pinning down a handful of keys on one of his toy keyboards, passing
the signal through his effects array. While at first the chaotic noise
threatens to overwhelm the delicate folk song with which it is
colliding, Mumford keeps the sonic maelstrom in play just long enough
for the serendipitous synergy between the two aesthetics—one
experimental, one traditional—to reveal itself, before he
silences the squall and brings his song to a haunting, graceful end.
While in lesser hands this kind of tinkering would senselessly ruin an
otherwise terrific little pop song, Mumford miraculously manages to
navigate the space between noise and folk by trusting equally in
chance and craft. The result is profoundly unique and moving music,
akin to what a Leonard Cohen/Smegma collaboration might sound like.

Dragging an Ox through Water is, in my opinion, absolutely one of the
best bands going today. Live, Mumford is a mesmerizing performer, able
to consistently win over diehard noise aficionados as well as pop
purists with a single song. On record, his songs glow with a rich,
homemade luster and benefit from an expanded, but never ostentatious,
instrumentation, variously including recorder, drums, keyboards, vocal
harmonies, and occasional whistling. Though we can look forward to a
new Dragging an Ox through Water 12-inch in 2008, I still can’t get
enough of 2006’s Rebukes! EP, which includes Mumford’s intimate
anthem “Aces,” certainly among the best songs ever written in
Portland.

Dragging an Ox through Water plays at KPSU venue the Modern
Age on Friday, November 16, at 8 pm. The show is open to music lovers
of all ages on a sliding scale of $3-5 and also features Please Step
out of the Vehicle, Bodhi, and Mattress.