Gratitillium, Friday, June 12

[June 10th, 2009]

[ANIMAL FARM] Frustrated with the folk he’d sang since picking up the guitar at age 15, Portland songwriter Nick Caceres turned to an unusual form of inspiration: the worshipping of animal spirits.

“It sounds weird, but I got really postmodern when I went up to Seattle one time,” Caceres says. First it was owls: owl statues, pictures of owls, owls on television. Then it was turtles. Before long, Caceres realized he was noticing images of different animals every month. “When I came to cats, it was like going to that random bus stop and sitting down and looking around and realizing that the entire inside of the bus stop was painted with cats,” Caceres says. And then a random friend would walk by named Kat. Though his first instinct was to call bullshit on himself, the songwriter eventually accepted the coincidences. They were too strong to ignore.

Caceres put a band together to help him move past his personal folk music, which he says drove him to an unhealthy place, and began writing songs about the experiences. “Gratitillium” is a word Caceres made up that represents “gratitude for animals,” but it also evokes the concept of creative collaboration. The album features 13 tracks, with each song focusing on—what else?—a different animal.

Gratitillium Vol. 1—written and recorded by Caceres using GarageBand—is a weird, loose collection of psychedelic-folk songs, and though the concept is admittedly a “bit kooky,” one gets the feeling Gratitillium’s songs are delivered from an honest place. The disc’s highlight, “Horse Around,” mutates from a quiet, wispy folk song into a crunchy, drum machine-driven rocker with Caceres singing “it’s just the good vibrations taking over,” as his voice breaks into an sincere falsetto.

The album’s apex is penultimate track “Free Elephants,” in which Caceres finally breaks through his songwriting struggles to express finding inner peace. The song is mostly wordless, but the animalistic background coos and yelps are both fun and playful, executed live with the help of bandmates Keith Foster (lead guitar), Simon Hannes (clarinet), Mark McIntire (bass) and Paul Ahrens (drums). Caceres seems pretty sure about what he’s doing—even going so far as to dress up as animals onstage. “I suppose the future of Gratitillium is quasi-nude, specially designed costumes,” Caceres says about the band’s summer gig attire. “It’s like David Bowie meets a zoo.”