The storied rise of Portland’s hippest metal band is by now
so familiar to indie rockers and headbangers alike, it might as well be
in book form: Young malcontents escape the cornfields of rural
Illinois, form a band in psychedelic Portland, discover doom in the
last days of disco punk, and score a big-label contract that will Robin
Hood their lives. For some people in the music business, that book
already exists. Danava’s press kit—47 pages in all—arrived
last Thursday with a copy of their new album, UnonoU. And the
funny thing is, it’s all kind of too good to be true.
The story begins with frontman Dusty Sparkles and drummer Buck Rothy
growing up in Quincy, Illinois, a small agricultural city on the banks
of the Mississippi River. Central Illinois collectively speaks in a
slightly mismatched Southern drawl. Sparkles retains a bit of the
accent, but to think of him as a country boy is to negate his age, 31,
and his four years in Chicago—a fact never mentioned in the
sprawling press kit.
“I ended up moving to the Six Corners for a while,” Sparkles says,
referring to the center of Wicker Park, a one-time arts hub. During
these Chicago years, he followed the city’s free-jazz scene and
befriended Drag City’s Steve Krakow, who has since released tracks by
the Bitter End—a defunct 1960s garage band fronted by Sparkles’
father—on the Galactic Zoo Dossier CD zine. Rothy attended
Southern Illinois University in downstate Carbondale, meeting bassist
Dell Blackwell and planning a larger escape for 2002.
“They were like, ‘Well, let’s go somewhere random,'” Sparkles
explains. “I was like, ‘Hey, what do you guys think of Portland,
Oregon?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, perfect.'”
When Danava formed in 2003, Sparkles was drumming for local no-wave
troupe Glass Candy. The association with Glass Candy and their
dare-to-be-synthetic music triggered some confusion when Sparkles
emerged as the singer/guitarist for what he calls, simply, “a rock
band.” With time-machine clothing and arguably egregious haircuts,
Danava blended Hawkwind prog with Ozzy hard rock on their 2006
eponymous full-length, and they’re still getting static for it.
“There’s a lot of that commotion going on, and people are saying
‘retro,'” Sparkles sighs. He defends the band’s measured image (which
is still excruciatingly vintage), arguing that the 1970s, for example,
weren’t even authentic. “They were trying to be retro, but there was
this strange, new quality about it,” he enthuses, drawing comparisons
to 1950s blues and 1930s theater. “Pretty much every phase of music has
been retro in a lot of ways.”
This chapter ends with UnonoU, an album nearly as sprawling
as those 47 pages. The group spent over a month recording at Kemado
Studios in New York City with engineer Chris Ribando, known for his
work with Madonna and Michael Jackson. “He’s not one of those guys at
all,” Sparkles laughs. “He fucking despises that shit.” The CD veers
from Blue Öyster Cult FM rock into Clockwork Orange synth
horror (“Where Beauty & Terror Dance”). It also bridges Terry Riley
minimalism with the timelessly weird time signatures of King Crimson
(“The Emerald Snow of Sleep”). Showing brass fringe and hard-rock soul,
Danava escape modernity again.