First off, happy to be back inside the woodsy confines of the Doug Fir Lounge. So comfy here for the likes of folks like us (Portlanders, that is), rather similar, I should think, to going to a show at your father's Elks Lodge while lost in a sort of Lynchian daydream. Makes me want to carve my name in one of the trademark logs with a day-glo knife. In short, feels like home. Thanks, Doug.
The term 'post-punk' is getting bandied about a bit again these days (as host of Songs From Under The Floorboards my ear is pretty attuned) and the ad copy for this show applied it to both Crocodiles and The Soft Pack, and in a sense - beyond just enjoying the hell out of myself - I'm here to verify. More on that later. For now, let's sit up and listen to Heavy Hawaii...
...and I'm rather immediately impressed, swinging straight into an emotionally tuneful plaint, led off by (yup) a near-tropical-sounding organ figure that's soon swamped in melody and a kind of yearning guitar pop I can never get enough of. Kind of American Music Club if they'd had more garage in 'em. Overall I'd ask for a stronger, more articulate vocal but in terms of hook and structure, I'm, umm, hooked. There's also an agreeable Velvety drone to them - even tossing around some teasing discord now and then - with a bit of Jesus & Mary Chain crunch added to the mix (doesn't hurt that the singer sports a Reid brother mein) that, despite the wobbly soundboard mix, makes for a surprisingly memorable set from an opening band most of us had yet heard of. Vocals, though, I dunno, seems an insult to the microphone somehow. Speak up, lads.
Crocodiles emerged to these ears in 2009 with their pithily-titled debut Summer Of Hate, an album of amiably cynical, intelligent post-garage garage that caught a lot of well-deserved attention, mashing up glam with (again) some driving echoey JAMC riffery. It was brash and unapologetic and one of my top 20 albums of that year. Recently Endless Flowers was released on French Kiss (I somehow missed 2010's Sleep Forever; my bad) and has also snapped not a few heads Crocodiles' way. At the moment, singer Brandon Welchez is walking onstage with a Miller in each hand, setting them strategically down and working at getting the mike right, while guitarist Charles Rowell stands slouchingly at the ready. Welchez's tweaking complete, we're off.
Often a band will, without perhaps even realizing it, exhibit a particular visual hook that catches one's eye right off. Strummer's stamping foot, Keith Moon's intuitive theatricality, something physical that's related to the music, sure, but also isolated from it. With Crocodiles it's Rowell's wonderful tic of throwing the guitar off his fretting hand after a chord or a fill, catching it, playing on, repeating, and even though it's strapped on, of course, it nonetheless conveys a kind of exciting, trickstery, daredevil passion for the loud, just-this-side-of-distortion pop noise the band is trading in. I'd go so far as to say he's a bit reckless but precisely so, if that makes any sense, ripping the fretboard to ringing pieces and giving each song its excoriating identity, the pinion of Crocodiles' sound.
So far as that ad copy goes, it's Marco Gonzalez's nimble, chest-deep bass makes people say 'post-punk,' I would guess, that and Welchez's blurred, darkly luring vocals. But in truth, the band, at least live, is as much shoegaze as post-punk, layering on rough sheets of sound on top of rough sheets of sound with a blasting sonic authority, like Ride in a high school gymnasium. When the singer straps on a Rickenbacker early in the set the assault begins in earnest, which I say in only the best way. The mysterious figure in all this is keyboard player Robin Eisenberg, Nico with black hair minus the icy vocals. Often, however, she too becomes lost in the mix, voice and keys both. Only way I could tell she was playing mostly rhythm runs was by the movement of her hands, a shame, surely. At least Welchez was clearly audible throughout their set and he's a singer with presence, his yelp often echoing through the Fir as if it's going to slice one of those logs clean in half, and in fact the band en totale just might have all that polished timber shivering a bit as Crocodiles produce a righteous, driving racket that could conceivably set the city woods afire.
First thing I notice about The Soft Pack is another Rickenbacker. Second thing I notice is a singer (Matt Lamkin) that's visually indebted to a young Jim Morrison. Musically, the initial impression is that I wouldn't exactly place them in the post-punk realm either, even as I have to admit that there is an Echo & The Bunnymen lean to them and by third song "Pull Out" off their self-titled second LP I might be persuaded to change my vote. Dave Lantzman's bass just grooves right into it, soon enough Lamkin is all tied up in Morrissey knots, Matty McLoughlin on that Rickenbacker is tripping away and I'm convinced that I'll soon be playing them on my show (which as of this writing I already have). "Chinatown," off new LP Strapped, does little to dispel this conviction which again comes down to, as much as anything, Lantzman's bass, its prominence anchors their sound along with, of course, Brian Hill staccato-ing away on drums like some genius mechanic of the beat. The mix in the club, by the way, is finally exactly right.
The Soft Pack began life as The Muslims, a name whose changing, no surprise, was predestined. But they did manage to issue two singles under that moniker and "Extinction," the first one (in fact the first song they ever wrote, according to Lamkin) gets aired tonight and it's a corker, a pop nugget of considerable charm and I wish I'd bought that single. The singer's playing rhythm, McLoughlin rips off a clean, 60s-worthy solo and the whole thing comes barreling to a close in strapping fashion.
There is, in rather secret-weapon fashion, a fifth member to this band, sax player Tony Belivacqua (though 'multi-instrumentalist' would be more accurate; bit later he'll take lead duties on "Everything I Know"), who disappeared back at "Pull Out" but reappears for "Tallboy" and adds essential grit to a set highlight, not surprising considering the flavors of The Go-Betweens and The Smiths that resonate in the song and Lamkin's spelled-out "T-A-L-L-B-O-Y" hook that will stay with me for days. That sax features even more prominently on "Bobby Brown" (yes, that Bobby Brown), a bar band/pub rock kind of rollicker that makes the trading of bass and lead just before it seem a brilliant stratagem. At this point I think that perhaps Belivacqua is the heart of the band but then realize that every member of The Soft Pack is the heart of the band, as well it should be (but isn't always, as we all know).
And so the night goes. "Parasites" is their most Echo redux and all the more a treat for it, Lamkin again making me think of a baggage-less Jim Morrison and it becomes clear that in that sense I gotta give it to 'em: on the Doors-driven side of post-punk The Soft Pack most certainly have a place at the table, even as "Mexico," a sad lost - or losing - love song speaks more to their LA ballad roots as any other inspiration, proving that terroir can't help but play its hand.
I can always tell I've had a good night out when I've written 'highlight of the night?' more than once in my notebook. Happened with "Tallboy," with "Extinction" and finally, with the penultimate "Answer To Yourself," which, simply put, is but a pure rock song through and through, drenched in hooks from the lively bassline to the Paisley Underground vocal (there's that regional DNA again) to the Husker Du-ish build of chords and solos, excellent excellent excellent.
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