Somehow, until recently, I hadn’t yet attended any live shows at the Get Down—the subterranean Central Eastside venue thriving since its 2022 opening. With a flush of seasonably accurate sunshine tantalizing even the most curmudgeonly amongst us this past weekend in Portland, I made it a point to touch base with the venue during a regional tour stop by London art rockers Ulrika Spacek. The psych-pop quintet performed a hypnotizing set of songs, many culled from their new LP, Expo—and I left knowing I would return many times to the GD.
The venue’s innards, with a wood floor reminiscent of a roller rink, and the band playing within, reminded me for the bajillionth time that there’s nothing that beats live music. The psychology of social dependence, being outside your own home, and of engaging physically with the magic of art is an unmatched pursuit.
The same weekend, a check-in with a great friend in a Northern Californian punk band, the Wind Ups, helped reiterate the sunny disposition, as he dutifully reported glad tidings and psyched all-ages crowds from several gigs in the American Northeast—information not surprising to hear given the band’s furiously paced sets.
In this week’s Spin Cycle, emphasis is given to formidable live talents—those for whom rallying communal optimism and rage, even while decked out in hypnotic polka dot camouflage, is something of a preternatural drive. If you’re reading this at a live show, put your GD phone down immediately, lock into whatever slippery groove is suspended in mid-air around you, and rejoice! Here’s a few to get you through until your next live show.
The Builders and the Butchers
No Tomorrow
For fans of Murder By Death, Loch Lomond, Chuck Ragan
Portland folk collective The Builders and the Butchers are 20 years into their existence and see no reason to rest on their considerable laurels. The spirit of their longevity seems encapsulated plainly enough in the title of their seventh LP, No Tomorrow. With some of their strongest material to date therein, it stands to reason if tomorrow never comes, at least today sounds this good. Songwriter Ryan Sollee revisits themes of buried promises, apocalyptic fires, and the excavation of dark secrets, always digging down to some murky depth with the brimstone of a Southern Gothic hoedown. Utilizing the vernacular of ecology and theological ubiquity, Sollee’s songs have always resonated at a particular frequency of dark folk. Following a bright, banjo-led album opener in “World’s on Fire,” the band downshifts into the moody “Blood:Death,” a haunting, buoyant tune that finds Sollee literally spelling out the thrust of the song’s imagery. Later, “Cold Fire Hymn” ushers in the Builders’ somewhat latent heavy guitar tendencies, a layer of their vast instrumental repertoire that has helped shape their most recent albums. Relying equally on a sneaky, lush viola (courtesy of Times Infinity’s Matt Radtke) and a dynamic, inventive rhythm section, the album—engineered by drummer/keyboardist Ray Rude—is a full-bodied vivisection of the Builders’ lineup’s varied and robust talents. Their compendium of haunted campfire tales emerge as beautiful and grisly, the compositions bearing the darkness out into thick slabs all the way through to the album’s finale, “A Wall:A Fire.” Recorded by tape player to retain an ominous hiss, the song’s aura speaks to the band’s willingness to diversify their sonic template, in what is also a bit of a throwback to the more raw recordings of their early days, and a nod to Rude’s engineering touches. On this last track, a farewell of grizzled harmonies and dog-eared melodic hooks thrust an instant earworm of anthemic proportions into the Builders’ ever-growing catalog.
No Tomorrow was released April 2 on Badman Recording Company. The album can be found on The Builders and the Butchers’ Bandcamp in vinyl and digital download formats.
Marquis Hill
(Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender
For fans of Chet Baker, Shabaka, Emma Jean Thackray
Eased in as you are by the first notes of the title track off (Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender, Marquis Hill’s new record, you’d be forgiven if you don’t see the artistic left turns approaching. The dazzling trumpet aria acts as a classy curtain-opening for one of the more inventive slices of contemporary jazz likely to come out this, or any year. From here on out, it’s the Chicago musician’s deft taste for collaborative juices giving the LP its spellbinding sweetness.
“Water (Feelings, Emotions) – Immanuel’s Edit” trims the fat with a staccato upright bass intro, paving the way for an airy exhibition taking Hill’s tempered trumpet to its breathy apex, giving the gorgeous, explorative sax the wheel a while, with sultry vocals from Chicago-based singer Amyna Love. Hill’s compositions continue to dazzle through phases, picking up bits of sexy R&B cool, as heard on the Zacchea’us Paul-accompanied track “Sweet Surrender,” where sizzling vocals launch a lethal dose of cathartic bliss through a velvety wall of brass and calming percussion.
Hill dips into experimental, free-range hip-hop on “Free #1A,” with Queens-based rapper Kumbaya’s streetwise mic-spitting leading a charge of psych-jazz vignettes popping like trippy blotter paper daydreams in Hill’s distinct sound lab. Later, “Blues” finds legs with a funky guitar intro, reminiscent of Betty Davis’ slick rhythmic grooves, though Hill takes the melody and broadens the tremolo warble to the trumpet, where he’s given open road for scintillating solos. Every new composition is a feast for the senses, traversing post-bop jazz polyrhythms (“The Pleasures of You”) that threaten to boil over at each introduction. Three versions of “Sweet Surrender” highlight the scale of Hill’s impressive process, offering listeners a more immersive sneak peek into the many angles of a composition’s bones, and how it is given room to bloom depending on the players and the temperament. Crank this album whenever you need a boost of unmitigated style.
(Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender dropped March 13 via the incredibly named Black Unlimited Music Group. The album can be scooped on Marquis Hill’s Bandcamp as a digital download.
Angine De Poitrine
Vol. II
For fans of Mandy, Indiana; Sausage; The Residents
The terminally online are undoubtedly privy at this point to the anonymous, polka-dotted Québécois art-math duo, Angine De Poitrine. The costumed anomalies seem to have been conjured from thin air, following the virality of a recent KEXP studio performance that prickled the microtonal fantasies of anyone who’s ever been into sitar music, Primus, or the Residents during any stretch of their listening lives. It’s a testament to how unpredictable the industry can be when the efforts of an indefinable performance art project yield such fervor, on both sides of the aisle. Suffice it to say that Vol. II is a maelstrom of angular, chewy prog-punk that, through repeated listens, still manages to unveil some unhinged majesty of danceable insanity.
There has always proven to be off-kilter potential in the two-piece band dynamic (The Americas, Suicide, et al.), and Angine De Poitrine’s guitarist-bassist-Pinocchio-alien thing illuminates the point through copious loop pedal foundations and double-helix microtonal bass and guitar flourishes that compel sticky, funky leads. The vaguely phallic drummer-alien thing (I don’t know what to call them) is basically a human metronome, though it does flash syncopated fills on songs like LP-opener “Fabienk,” a six-plus minute banger sounding like the bumper music to a Martian 900-number. The duo’s avant-garde bents unfold slowly as the compositions arise from quirky, though simple, guitar or drum runs. Before you know it, Eastern modal guitars descend from some unseen mothership to unleash audio chaos that edges on math-rock’s vibrant dimensions, audible on the unrelenting “Mata Zyklek.”
The fidelity of the performed music throughout the album is viscous, as you’d imagine with the essential power-trio accoutrement played by two. But even with the occasional distorted, incomprehensible vocals, the emphasis here is on whimsy as much as it is on technical prowess. “Utzp” is cinematic in scope, but probably more suited to a feature-length psychotropic cartoon. This band was made for the weirdos, and you are definitely allowed to sidestep the critical ravings of the collected peanut gallery regarding the project’s merits—simply immerse yourself in the wonderfully bizarre world the band creates. I know I have.
Angine De Poitrine self-released Vol. II April 3 and can be picked up as a digital download on the band’s Bandcamp.