Local News & Reviews

[January 10th, 2007]

^Michael The Blind Wednesday, Jan. 10

Local shy guy really puts himself out there. Musically, at least.

[RELUCTANT FOLK] Michael the Blind, though truly blind in a can't-legally-drive sort of way, is actually "very, very, very, very nearsighted." It's a moniker inspired as much by Michael Levasseur's actual sight limitations as by his love of early blues singers Blind Blake and Blind Willie Johnson. But despite the 31-year-old songwriter's varied influences—he throws out Haydn as easily as John Fahey—and his day job as head of the classical and jazz sections at Everyday Music on Burnside, he claims to be a "rock 'n' roll" artist.

Levasseur's haunting voice and oft-violent strumming—something akin to Horse Feathers covering Mountain Goats songs—do possess rock music's mixture of catchy and edgy. His music is a flurry of emotion, a brutal catharsis released over a lovely tapestry of rich and busy acoustic guitar, soft, shuffling drums and various accoutrements such as weaving electric guitar lines, ethereal bells or a dirge-like organ. Levasseur, a softspoken chain smoker with a messy mop of dark hair and extremely thick specs, is as subtly candid in person as his music would suggest. Over a couple of Seven & Sevens at McMenamins' Cellar Bar, he says, "A lot of my songs are songs where I'm telling an imaginary person, or a person that I have in mind, to fuck off."

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in South Carolina, Levasseur has played and sung at such odd events as beauty pageants, Daughters of the American Revolution picnics and even a funeral. And though he's performed as a classical singer (where he was often criticized in competition for singing too much from the heart), as half of a folk duo, in a number of rock bands and as the leader of a doo-wop group, Levasseur's a lone wolf at heart. "Writing for me is a very solitary process," he explains. But his solitary nature doesn't end there: Though he winces at the term "homebody," he admits, "I don't go out ever. I play a show, and then I feel like I've done my job and I go home."

Despite the fact that Levasseur can be "pretty uncomfortable in social situations," little pieces of him are out there for the taking, in his songs—which can be heard on 2004's slightly more stripped down Secrets and Lines and his recent, gorgeously eerie Names and Numbers—and in his albums' individually unique, handmade sleeves. Though Levasseur enjoys giving listeners something "more personal," he admits that such time-consuming-yet-financially sound packaging has its downfalls: "At this point," he says, "say I had 10 people who wanted the CD. I don't have them." For now, Levasseur seems happy to be able to offer the few copies available at Everyday Music for $15.99 a pop. As he says, "I like being right where I am."

—AMY MCCULLOUGH.

Michael the Blind plays with the Crosswalks Wednesday, Jan. 10, at Ground Kontrol. 9 pm. Free. 21+. Also see Wednesday listing.

^Iretsu Mitlaufer

Never mind the mess, Iretsu's latest puzzle is worth the effort.

[SOUNDTRACK CHAOS] Mitlaufer is a somewhat tangential release for Portland avant-everything septet Iretsu. It was originally composed as the score for an interactive (anti-)stage performance of the same name by Fever Theater. Given that, and given Fever Theater's tendency toward going over the top, this accompaniment makes perfect sense. It simply doesn't have any scope, charging off in about 30 directions in the course of its 21-song length. Lounge? Yep. Prog-rock? Aplenty. Krautrock? Sure.

So, yes, the album's coherence is trapped in the play. Yet, this isn't to say that Mitlaufer isn't fully enjoyable at its many turns. "Higher and Higher" is a fine, racing chamber-core piece that charges forward from a gloomy pair of guitar melodies into rolling bass and a three-way call-and-response between two chorales and a string section. It's nearly overwhelming by the end, but then again, the following track puts "overwhelming" into perspective. "Wagner" does its namesake justice with an almost ridiculous "epic" operatic chorus. Iretsu follows it with "Room (Part II)," a bouncy drum line hued with intervals of electronic buzzing. A highlight of the album, "Diotima's Dane," is two halves of a post-rock atmospheric waltz split down the middle with a free-jazz meltdown. Further down the line, "Swastika" nods extravagantly toward Metal Boys-esque synth-pop...with more lasers. You get the idea.

If the record does pique your curiosity about what you missed from Fever Theater last spring, fear not—the plot's spelled out somewhat on the final track, "Pandemonium." It's an acoustic-guitar-based pitch song for the Pandemonium Institute, an artist pseudo-retreat where the artists are in fact being warped into creating sales pitches. "Sea of Oblivion" adds to the storyline, introducing Leni Riefenstahl, of Triumph of the Will infamy, as the title character (mitlaufer roughly translates to "someone on the bandwagon"). She becomes an example of everyone trapped in the institute, ignorant of the harm their art is causing. Plotwise, it's hard to discern much more than that. If every track on this album had words, the sketch above might make a whole lot more sense, and indeed would the album. Since that's not the case, and memories of the stage event fade every day, we'll just have to take this as a frequently brilliant, frequently insane collection of musical scenes.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

Iretsu plays with Sophe Lux and Bright Red Paper on Jan. 11 at the Doug Fir. 9 pm. $6. 21+.

^Soul P. Friday, Jan. 12

Portland's only major-label MC tackles G's and the big G.

[CHRISTIAN RAP] I don't usually spend hours listening to Christian rap. Then again, Soul P. (who hates that genre tag) isn't the usual Christian rapper. The Portland MC built his reputation by performing alongside hip-hop acts of every stripe, and his love for God has always shared the lyrical limelight with autobiographical material and calls for social justice.

P.'s Beatmart (a Sony imprint) debut, The Premiere, throws a new coat of paint on his old formula. It's an ambitious album that features minimalist party anthems, turntable-fueled hip-hop beats and deep soul cuts. God is the clear lyrical focus in almost all of these well-produced tracks, but that doesn't keep the MC from showcasing his smooth, thoughtful flow or sharing his far-from-squeaky-clean story.

Even on the dance-club tracks, P. manages to share a bit of his story with his listeners. "What you know about this right here?" he asks over a chirp-and-clap beat on "I'm Here": "The road that it took just to get right here." Later, on "Hear My Cry," the MC fills his listeners in on the details of that road: his absent father, his lack of respect for women and his "drinking whiskey e'ey day, playin' dominoes/ Smokin' herb out a pipe like Geronimo."

Alas, a Christian MC can't spend a whole record talking about high times, so with every admittance of P.'s prior transgressions comes a reference to his salvation. Some of these God bombs sound natural, and some sound a tad forced. "Yeah it's time, 'cause I feel it and it feel right," he clumsily tells a special lady over sweeping strings. "With God in the frame, the picture, it'll look right."

The album's defining song is "I'm the Street," a dark, closing-credits-worthy rap ballad with a breathy hook that sounds reminiscent of a young LL Cool J. At first, it sounds like Soul P. is just exaggerating his street cred: "I been stepped on, slept on, bloody and wet/ Alone when the sun came and alone when it set." Turns out, he's rapping from the perspective of God, and God, apparently, is tired of the bullshit. "I've been beaten by the police and I've heard their plots/ I was there firsthand when Amadou [Diallo] got shot." Regardless of your spiritual persuasion (mine, for the record, is un-persuaded), P.'s tenderness in tackling the presumptuous concept leaves the listener in awe of his lyrical skill and stirred by the MC's deep belief.

It would have been nice to see some other Northwest artists on The Premiere, for repping's sake. Still, it's a strong, honest and musically diverse major-label debut for which Soul P. didn't have to sell his soul. That's something to be thankful for.

—CASEY JARMAN.

Outlaws Bar & Grill. 8 pm. $5. 21+.

^Graves easy not easy (Hush)

Graves' latest release drowsily grooves toward recognition.

[ALT-COUNTRIFIED LOUNGE] Graves' fourth release, Easy Not Easy, proves itself in its first few measures with little more than a repeating four-note guitar melody. That melody, to be fair, is gracefully accompanied by sly pedal-steel twangs and a shuffling drumbeat, but still, it barely seems fair for something so simple and so light to operate as such a sharp hook. Maybe part of it is the fact that said track, "No/Where," has the same grand, dusty-day-in-a-concrete-city feel as Beck's Mellow Gold. Over the song's following three minutes, it builds into a perfect meandering pop-folk tune lit with broken-chord piano flourishes—courtesy of Cory Gray (Norfolk & Western, Desert City Soundtrack)—a brief whistle interlude and the lazy, shrugged line: "Stick around/ It's gonna get you nowhere/ You'll be next to me."

The disc's next track, "Dirty Bird"—a lovely trumpet- and chorus-filled ode to kink—sexes up alt-country in a way it's needed for a long time: Sings Greg Olin, "I know I'm a dirty bird/ A dirty little dirty bird/ I know that you're a dirty bird, too." Much of Easy Not Easy, indeed, carries itself lightly, and sweetly. "Pulling Out," for instance, could well be about a certain birth-control method, yet I've never heard it put so poetically; the concept is placed here rather metaphorically, cloaked in driveway references and the like.

Easy Not Easy continues through nearly all of its 14 tracks with similar themes of love and lust. The drowsy lounge cut "Hotel/Motel," with its refrain of "Hotel/ Don't tell/ Motel/ Don't tell," is another highlight of the latter, but it's tinged with regret from the start by way of a somber lone trumpet—a common piece of Graves composition. It's an incredibly effective way to set a mood, but that mournful trumpet has nothing on the muffled train whistles that close "New Retreat," the album's standout treatise on isolation.

But "New Retreat" is simply a standout among standouts, proving that Olin's Graves has gone overlooked for far too long. The craft here is thoughtful, impeccable: Every arrangement—while maintaining the album's resolute laze—seems to touch a different corner of pop music; whether it be folk, country, jazz, lounge, R&B, or whatever we call the collisions in between, the Graves stamp is never lost. And however long recognition takes—the band is obviously in no rush—that stamp will stand without any reference needed.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.

^Children of the Revolution, Jan. 6 at AudioCinema

Local fest proves a glorious revolution of thrashing, dancing and tinnitus.

[LOUD & ECLECTIC] Nanotear Booking and Old Town booze-hole Tube, whose folks organized the second annual installment of the Children of the Revolution festival, deserve massive credit for putting together an event as diverse and far-reaching as last Saturday's 14-hour sound marathon. Though decidedly bent toward noise and metal, everything from clean and catchy indie-pop (courtesy of the unshakable Shaky Hands) to electro party music found its place. And, wonderfully, CotR brought in a crowd that shunned nothing, a crowd that danced to a masked-yet-barely clad Fleshtone and, a half-hour later, thrashed and flailed to Black Elk's hair- and hell-raising set of hardcore/metal crush.

Plus, the setup at inner Southeast's cavernous AudioCinema, generally a practice/studio space, never forced the crowd to miss anything: With three stages, the break between sets was nonexistent, save for a brief pause in action during a last-minute sprint to the airport to pick up 31Knots' drummer, Jay Pellicci. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the hurry, but the trio, which played last, delivered a totally off-the-rails yet flawless set of prog-rock glory. Frontman Joe Haege's stage presence is one of utter possession: He swapped outfits mid-song, preached from a pulpit placed among the crowd and, at the end, mournfully pawed at a dismembered mannequin. It may have been the best thing I've seen since the rain started in October (and to think I almost bailed out from exhaustion before the set).

Other notable blows to the head came from D. Yellow Swans' hypnotic set of noise-immersed howls and spastic, barely defined guitar melodies and, prior to that, from experimental psych band Mustaphamond, whose drummer's arms call to mind hummingbird wings (a very large, very dangerous hummingbird). Behalf, a pure squawk-and-scream duo, gave us a taste of what hell is like, while Scout Niblett actually kept it cool for her set, skipping the grunge snarl and rage for something a little more Joni Mitchell than Patti Smith. And, through all of the above (and much more), the faces in the crowd were the same: Aesthetic boundaries are apparently null in the midst of revolution.

—MICHAEL BYRNE.