Shape Shifter

[July 2nd, 2008]

In Jean Eustache’s 1973 film La Maman et la Putain (The Mother and the Whore) the central protagonist, Alexandre, is stuck between a rock and, well, a hot nurse. It’s a classic love triangle: How does a young narcissist decide between the shop-owning girlfriend he sometimes lives with and a young, brash nurse? The film is long and divisive and conflicting. But, mostly, it’s about indecision. And it just happens to be Jordan Blum’s favorite movie of all time.

Blum is the sonic architect behind local electro-pop group Dykeritz, which, after two years of limited activity, returns this summer with a fantastic new record called Rearrangerologyistics. Following 2006’s relatively sedate and mostly instrumental Snowing Windy Peaches, it could be seen as a return to pop form—if Dykeritz wasn’t Portland’s most mercurial band. “[Peaches] was just kind of all over the place, and people’s reactions were similar,” Blum mentions from his Southeast Portland apartment. “So I had a plan of just doing nine songs that were all pop songs. I really wanted nine tight pop songs.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Purple Switzerland, Dykeritz’s ’05 debut—skewed pop filled with enough lo-fi oomph and ringing guitars to get even the most stoic indie-rock fan moving. Yet six months after the album’s release, Dykeritz underwent a complete stylistic shift, cutting a four-piece band (assembled to support Switzerland live) down to just Blum and Lucky Madison Records boss Ryan Feigh. It also narrowed the root of its sound to prerecorded beats and synths. Rearrangerologyistics, then, is an amalgam of the two previous versions of Dykeritz: Blum’s back to writing pop songs, but they retain the sonic experimentation and ADD naiveté of Snowing Windy Peaches.

Blum comes off as ineffably shy and humble in person, but his music is anything but restrained. Each track on the new album is filled to the brim—mountains of synthesizers and keyboards, hazy vocals, frantic percussion, piano breaks and, on “Too Many Chefs,” a totally unexpected and air guitar-worthy solo. Amazingly, Blum plays nearly everything on the record—he says two friends laid down trombone and backing vocals on album opener “The Apple Is Blue”—and professes a throw-it-all-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to songwriting.

“I usually just start with the piano, and then I get vocal melodies and fill in the blanks from there,” he says. “I’ve been doing it that way forever. I think 1996 was the first Dykeritz album [a tape that never left Blum’s apartment], and though that was crap music, I learned the craft of just doing it yourself.”

While Blum asserts that he doesn’t read much, he certainly has a knack for detail: The lyrics on Rearrangerologyistics depict inspired—if sometimes nonsensical and off-the-cuff—snippets of a sepia-toned life. Like surreal images spinning through a home projector, they tell of a “tennis-colored floor collecting tears” and “the moon pouring into a wheelbarrow.” Typical love songs these are not.

“I always carry a pad of paper when I walk around and write stuff down, and most of it is garbage,” says Blum, fidgeting with a nearby keyboard. “That was a challenge because I wanted the lyrics to be good. Sometimes when lyrics stick out it’s in a bad way, so I’d like to think mine are quotable—in a good way.”

And the songs on Rearrangerologyistics, less any of the last record’s filler, are instantly memorable. But talking to Blum, you get the sense that nothing is ever concrete. When asked about the sampled bits that show up sporadically throughout the album (an alarm bell ringing near the end of “The Apple Is Blue,” applause in summer standout “Big Drapes”), he admits to liking stuff “that is random.” After playing two pre-release shows as a three-piece (with Feigh and Dat’r’s Paul Alcott on drums), Blum decided to change things up once again—all subsequent shows will feature a seven-member group.

“If it was just me and one other person, it would sound terrible,” Blum confesses of the new material. Despite leaning away from a smaller live setup, the 29-year-old claims most of his influences are solo experimental electronic composers or found-sound collagists (he name-drops David Behrman and Alvin Curran, respectively). Yet, his songwriting remains distinctly pop. It may be a bit indecisive, but that’s just the way Blum likes it. “My music would be boring if it was simple,” he says, laughing. “That’s why I don’t do it [that way] anymore.”