Critical Juncture

[November 19th, 2008]

Point Juncture, WA is the Illuminati of Portland’s indie-rock scene. Its name doesn’t pop up often in national publications, nor are its members evangelical about promoting their band. But for the past five years, the group’s influence has been felt throughout Portland’s thriving underground, in dank basement shows and via the band members’ countless side projects and the outside groups that multi-instrumentalist Skyler Norwood has produced (Blind Pilot, Horse Feathers, etc.). PJWA is a band’s band.

That clichéd title grows out of a rare intersection of musical prowess and personal humility. In concert, PJWA is a disciplined squad that slips effortlessly from vibraphone-fueled jazz-pop in odd time signatures to screaming guitar-fuzz assaults in 4/4 time. But it’s the joy they take in playing that endears them to audiences, evidenced as equally by guitarist Wilson Vediner’s unabashed rock guitar moves as by Amanda Spring’s laser-beam stare from behind the drums. The stage seems a sacred place for PJWA, and they disappear into themselves upon taking it, becoming vessels for the music.

Offstage is another story. Bonded together by Simpsons one-liners and inside jokes, one would be hard-pressed to find a goofier or more tightly knit group. Which makes keeping them on topic during an interview—as I attempted to do last Friday at Northwest Portland’s Stepping Stone Cafe—somewhat of a challenge. So is recording an album.

“Ask them to do anything more complicated than eat french fries and things get complicated,” a smiling, stubble-faced Victor Nash says of the particularly tempestuous studio relationship between Vediner and Norwood. “We’ve been playing these songs now for over three years,” Vediner adds, explaining that the band has four or five variations of many songs from its brand-new second full-length, Heart to Elk. Democracy is slow and sometimes bitter, and PJWA is a pretty democratic band—so while all of its members engage in politicking to keep their favorite parts in any given song (“So you have a series of signals for different people in the band?” Spring asks Norwood with befuddlement), PJWA has developed a group ethos (somewhere between Sonic Youth and Tortoise, though more accessible than either) after spending countless hours crammed in a van together on tours of the western U.S.

That group aesthetic is visible in every aspect of Heart to Elk, right down to the artwork (cute animals drawn by Spring). Musically, the band turned to producer friends for advice. “We didn’t know you weren’t supposed to record the whole thing in one room,” Nash admits.

Heart to Elk came out crazy victorious. Where past releases (2004’s Juxtapony EP and 2005’s Mama Auto Boss) had an identifiable blueprint—pretty, subdued harmonies lead into math beats lead into a wall of guitar fuzz—Heart to Elk is remarkably unpredictable and tricky. It offers the hypnotic tranquility of the best shoegaze albums, but seldom loses the listener’s attention in its lush production and orchestration, spinning on a dime with a blast of brass or a drum fill the moment a song starts to drag. Spring and Nash, who’ve played in bands together since high school, split vocal and songwriting duties, and both sound more natural than ever before.

For a breathless five-song stretch between the mechanical assault of “New Machine” and the slow-building majesty of “The Kings Were Good,” the album reaches an absolute perfection—culminating in an exhausting swirl of guitar feedback, in-the-red drum fills and soaring trumpet lines. And even at its weakest moments, Heart to Elk demands the listener’s attention. If this release doesn’t garner the national attention it deserves, it’s probably because PJWA’s allegiance is to making great music, not marketing itself.

“I’m always just thankful for where we end up,” Spring says of the band’s low-key persona. “Me too,” Norwood adds, munching on a french fry. “When we were opening for Dirty Three a couple years ago, I was backstage thinking, ‘This may be as good as it ever gets.’ And after that I made sure to enjoy every bit. We just want to do this as long as it doesn’t suck.” Hearing them now, at the height of their powers, it’s pretty hard to imagine PJWA ever sucking.