Circled By Hounds Friday, Dec. 19

[December 17th, 2008]

[RAW CELTIC MUSIC] Death and sorrow are essential to American music, and there’s good reason—like most things American, our music is drawn from Old World traditions brought throughout centuries of immigration. And in the songs of the British Isles’ oppressed factions, we may be doomed, but at least we can dance.

Portland’s Circled by Hounds churns out raw Celtic music, mixing traditional ballads and originals with common links to blight and booze. The quartet offers musical jubilance over lyrics of longing, love and the damned. The very giddy damned.

“There’s this cool play [between the lyrics and music],” says fiddler and vocalist Kathryn Claire. “Even though it has this haunting sound and it’s in this minor key, people are sweating and dancing.”

The band’s audience isn’t limited by age. Kids who might otherwise be dismissive find something darkly appealing in the wailing fiddles and swampy ballads, and the old folks recognize the music’s history. It’s hard not to hear the depth to the band’s sound.

“It’s a pivotal foundation of American music,” says guitarist Matty Hayward-McDonald over proper pints at Hounds’ home base, Biddy McGraw’s. “It’s just us trying to reach back to our heritage to find it and be able to actually bring it to the contemporary times—and it’s still very vibrant.”

Circled by Hounds is whimsically enamored with its roots. When speaking of Celtic music, Claire’s large, striking eyes firmly shut as she gestures like a conductor to describe it. Quiet co-fiddler Sarah Dee nods in agreement when heavily tatted percussionist Vash says that, with a new record and promising prospects, 2009 is the “Year of the Hound.” Playful groans and sighs all around.

At a typical Biddy’s show­—where the band will release full-length Howl No Demon Louder this Saturday—Hounds bounds between Irish tunes laced with Romani gypsy rhythms. The two classically trained fiddle players harmonize on the strings and with their voices, exchanging glances while their notes intermingle in a harmonic dance. Vash and Hayward-McDonald can’t hold still, their knees nearly buckling to the rhythm. The band members trade lead vocal duties between them, and sometimes instruments are set aside for a cappella pieces, or when members pick up random objects—pitchforks, kitchen knives, spatulas—to bang as percussive instruments.

Like the poor folk who originally brought their music to the new world, Circled by Hounds is a musical family—one that literally spends Thanksgivings together. And for them, Celtic music is more than just a hobby. “There is a visceral need for me to sing and play this music,” says Hayward-McDonald as bandmates nod in agreement. “It’s an internal need for me to do this.”