Blotter, Q&A, Previews

[February 1st, 2006]

^Blotter

FIRST ON THE SCENE WITH PORTLAND'S HOT TOPICS

Blotter is happy to report that the Thermals are hard at work on their third album, the follow-up to 2004's Fuckin A. Unfortunately, according to band leader Hutch Harris, drummer Jordan Hudson has departed the band, leaving Harris and bassist Kathy Foster to trade off on drumming duties when the band begins recording with Fugazi's Brendan Canty at Supernatural Records in Oregon City. The working title for the album is Power Doesn't Run on Nothing, and the songs will be chock-full of Christian imagery and paranoia. Musically, Harris says, the songs have a Weezer feel to them "in terms of the pacing," but the sound "isn't really that different." After the Thermals finish recording, they plan on searching for a drummer and a keyboardist they can prepare for shows after a possible late-summer release. >> Velabonz , a local drama-rock quintet that sounds a bit like a guy with a sinus infection singing Mötley Crüe songs through a Kansas filter, is apparently gaining some attention from at least one major label. Word has it that Epic A&R folk are in town to check out the group that boasts more than 60,000 page views at myspace.com, where interested parties can listen to songs like "Trouble," "Scream," "Break" and "Whore." Or those interested parties can watch the boys with angular black hair prance about the stage at the Aladdin Theater this Saturday.

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^Tara Jane O'neil Wednesday, Feb 1

It's Tara Jane's party, and she'll play what she wants to.

[SINGER-SOUND-WRITER] Over the past six years, the trajectory of Tara Jane O'Neil's name has moved toward musical refinement, away from sound experimentation and into naked, traditional song structures washed clean of noise play. Her actual path as an artist, however, is less simple to chart. Over the past year, she released Tracer, a collaborative audiovisual EP; finished work on a solo EP, A Raveling (to be released together on vinyl by Mississippi Records in late February); contributed to Flags of the Sacred Harp, last fall's stunning release by experimental music collective Jackie-O Motherfucker; graced the walls of our city's galleries with her paintings; and soundscaped the spaz dances of Fred Nemo. Last Thursday, I sat down with O'Neil to talk about names, noise and what happens next. MICHAEL BYRNE.

WW: It seems like you slipped away for a while. Where to?

Tara Jane O'Neil: I was on kind of a hiatus last year. I played a bunch, but every time I played it was kind of a sound thing more than a song thing: I improvised sets, or played to films.

And now?

I'm going to tour with songs, small arrangements, no band, no noise really...maybe some soundscape stuff.

Why?

When I'm doing more song-based sets, I'm not worried about all the gadgets and shit, having all of my extremities touching some sort of band thing to make it all work. I guess I'm most interested in delivering a focused song, and that could mean it meanders off into some weird sound forest, too.

Even on your records, though, it seems the move is toward songwriting.

It might be better, or more interesting, or less frustrating, or something to kind of split the two, continue forward with my own name as the songwriter and then have a new band, well, not entirely new—the same basic operation—but with a different moniker. I don't know what people expect, nor am I sure I want to give that to them. Someone in town pointed out that I usually do the opposite of what some expect. [At the PDX Pop Now! festival] last year, I played a noise set. This year, I played before Jackie-O and did a set with my country band. But that wasn't a deliberate exercise in Opposite Day. I'm old now; I can do whatever I want.

Tara Jane O'Neil opens for Damien Jurado Wednesday, Feb. 1, at the Doug Fir. 9 pm. $10. 21+.

^The High Violets Friday, Feb 3

No one makes music like this while gazing at their shoes.

[POP] "So we had this record, we had our picture in Rolling Stone, and had to figure out a way to do what we could," guitarist Clint Sargent remembers. His band, the High Violets, released their debut, 44 Down, in the spring of 2002 to critical adoration and a faintly bizarre (soundtracking MTV's Sorority and Fraternity Life) mainstream appeal. The layered guitars, textured arrangements and exquisite vocals from local treasure Kaitlyn ni Donovan led the national press to proclaim the High Violets rightful heirs to My Bloody Valentine's loose-limbed wall of tuneful noise-jam sorrow and eagerly await the follow-up. And they waited for a while.

"This record took three years because we weren't satisfied with our lineup," Sargent continues. "We had to wait for the right situation. We had to trash some recordings because we weren't happy with them and bring in some other people to make it right." To Where You Are, the band's second album, justifes any hesitancy: It's focused and assured and far more catchy than their suggested shoegazer genre implies.

They began, as a band, at Bar of the Gods six years ago. Sargent had left the Bella Low, and Kaitlyn ni Donovan, bartender at the time, had grown somewhat weary of her solo career, currently incarnate as Isolade. "I honestly just wanted to be drunk and shake a tambourine and sing backup," she says. "This sounded like the perfect getaway band at the time. I could be not quite all there and still have a lot of fun on stage and not have to pick up three different instruments."

"She was a lead singer and we weren't," Sargent allows. Ni Donovan's lithium-angelic, fully breathed vocals—similar to the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser—shrug a sudden, obvious presence that the surrounding orchestration understands and accepts. While a keening riff may tangle with the verse or leave things stark and haunting toward an explosive chorus, her voice remains the touchstone, dependent upon the song, but just as important.

"With the music, we're not exploring the strange realms of different chords," she says, "and the lyrics aren't supposed to be deep dives into the soul. As simplistic as they are on this album, I was struggling to the end. Right as I was doing vocal takes, I was panic-stricken, I was freaking out—some of them were written right in the studio, blindly. Good things are happening in your life and, like, what am I going to write about?"

We are, all of us, shoegazing. The High Violets are looking to the stars for inspiration, and they've apparently found it. JAY HORTON.

The High Violets play with Hypatia Lake and Binary Dolls at Doug Fir. 9 pm. $8. 21+.