It’s been a grand year to live and listen to music in
Portland. Though nearly 50 new locally made albums—drawn
from a staggering diversity of genres—found a place in my regular
rotation of records this year, in my view the following five gems
glittered even more brightly than the rest. All of the usual
disclaimers about the vagaries of personal preference apply. Musicians
of Portland, you’ve done us proud yet again.
1. Menomena—Friend and Foe
Were Friend and Foe the only album to have come out of
Portland in 2007, I would feel no less confident, based on its
strengths alone, making the case that our strange little city is
producing the best music in the country right now. Making
good—or, rather, unfathomably great—on the unrefined
promise of their 2003 debut I Am the Fun Blame Monster!, the
three multi-instrumentalist musketeers of Menomena stormed the Grammy
gates and erected a visionary monument unto indie ambition that will
stand the test of time.
2. Au—Au
I swear that birds recommenced their chirping, flowers came into
bloom, and spring truly began this year at the precise moment that I
randomly stumbled across Au’s MySpace page and pressed play on the
track “Boute.” The song opens Au’s self-titled debut LP and is thus the
opening volley in the band’s campaign of radical classical/folk
integration. As someone who loved Philip Glass before Sonic Youth,
hearing this was a revelation—like happening upon the ruins of an
ancient city only to find the moss-covered remains of technology
infinitely more complex than that of the present.
3. Starfucker—untitled EP
I sang the praises of this
delightful little CD-R’s third track, “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the
Second,” at length in this column two weeks ago, declaring it a
flawless specimen of bedroom pop, and my favorite song of the year. I
also suggested that you could find someone to stand with equal ardor
behind each of this EP’s seven tracks. It follows, then, that this
first set of recordings by now-and-again Sexton Blake mastermind Josh
Hodges under his new moniker, Starfucker, is remarkably strong as a
whole. Starfucker’s smooth-edged, fun-first songlettes are unlabored,
unblemished, and pack enough melodic punch to knock out even Tay
“Chocolate Rain” Zonday.
4. Jefrey Leighton Brown—Change Has Got to
Come!
When you collect the data, run the analysis, and plot
the graph of Portland music, jazzman Jef Brown is the point that bucks
the indie-electro-folk trend line and seems to make no contextual
sense. Though Brown would be a frustrating outlier for sonic
statisticians, he is an inspiring breath of
fresh air for lovers
of timeless tune and tone. A founding member of Jackie-O Motherfucker
and currently the leader of Evolutionary Jass Band, Brown harmonizes
his experimental instincts and respect for tradition to work wonders on
this basement-born, sax-centric album of foggy, post-Coltrane
sincerity.
5. Blitzen Trapper—Wild Mountain Nation
If you’d told me a few months ago that this album would become one
of my favorites of 2007, I wouldn’t have believed you. While I could
never really find a way into this Kentucky-fried sextet’s previous
albums of disjointed roots rock, the band’s moccasin-wearing inner
wolf-children lured me into their teepee this time around by letting
their mellower side show. The eccentricities, angles, and enthusiasm
still lead the way on this sun-soaked Western picaresque, but for the
first time the melodies and structures are more than strong enough to
survive the journey.