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Since that epic show, Quasi has sustained a reputation as one of the Pacific Northwest's most explosive and offbeat indie-rock acts. What's remarkable and often overlooked is the duo's ability to maintain its concentration in the face of such chicanery. Fully clothed and seated calmly at a table in a Northeast Portland coffeehouse last week, Coomes and Weiss suggest that their best performances are almost effortless. "If all is going well, you're not thinking too much," says Weiss, whose ultra-straight jet black hair contrasts sharply with her bright yellow fuzzy sweater. Coomes, who rarely makes eye contact and is prone to fiddling with a nearby teaspoon, adds, "You know the song is dead when you're playing it and thinking, 'I'm kinda hungry. I think I saw a burrito place down the street.'" Strangely, Quasi hadn't been able to translate this unwavering attention to record until recently, when Coomes and Weiss set up shop at local Jackpot Studio and worked on their soon-to-be-released third album, Featuring "Birds" (the title refers to one of the tracks, an 81-second interlude taken from an Audubon field recording). Where Quasi's two previous efforts zigzagged between occasionally brilliant, fully developed songs and diversionary instrumental segments, the new album unfolds like a neatly produced road map marked with explicit directions to pop euphoria. Coomes has mastered his skills as a melody maker. Along with Weiss, whose increased vocal presence leads to striking, organic harmonies, he's able to select underused elements from the more whimsical side of the rock canon--the Kinks' baroque organ wizardry, George Harrison's backward guitar riffs, Syd Barrett's oblique romanticism, Built to Spill's evocative repetition--to enliven Quasi's pointed songs. The bitterness and disenfranchisement that pervaded 1997's R&B Transmogrification, which served as something of a postscript to Coomes and Weiss' divorce two years earlier, is less prevalent on Birds; even holdover songs from the period like "I Never Want to See You Again" and "Nothing from Nothing" take on a sunnier tone. Elsewhere, there's a bucolic psychedelic ballad, "It's Hard to Turn Me On"; a bouncy update on Lennon's "Working Class Hero" called "The Happy Prole"; a narrative about an ill-fated mutiny, "Sea Shanty"; and a parable called "California" that reprises Thomas Wolfe's message, You Can't Go Home Again, and opens with a nursery rhyme that could have been thought up by a macabre Dr. Seuss: "Life is dull, life is gray, at its best it's just OK/But I'm happy to report/Life is also short." Coomes says he emphasized the thematic aspect of his work this time, arranging tracks to better control the motifs--man vs. machine, man vs. woman, life vs. death--that have surfaced in his work since his days in the late-'80s San Francisco band Donner Party. He and Weiss, who splits her time between Quasi and Sleater-Kinney, benefited from their increasing expertise in the studio, where they were helped by longtime friend and fellow Northern California emigré, producer Lawrence Crane. "The main difference," Weiss says, "is that we recorded in one chunk of time, spending almost every day for three weeks together, recording, working on music with few distractions. In the past, because we've done it at home, we could spend however much time we needed, and it tended to stretch out and be less focused." "We had more resources," Coomes adds, alluding to Quasi's contract with Seattle's Up Records. "This is the first time anybody's ever given us money to make music." To this point, Quasi hasn't needed much cash. Coomes estimates that his durable keyboard, which has only buckled once under his physical abuse and was repaired, cost him $50 when he bought it years ago. Nowadays, such retro items fetch hundreds of dollars in pawn shops and music stores. "The vintage instrument thing hadn't reached that level yet," he says. "Pretty much all instruments that are more than three years old are now considered vintage and the price goes way up." The accessible, enjoyable Birds will certainly earn Quasi greater name recognition across the country, especially when the duo takes to the road later this spring, but this doesn't mean the money will come rolling in. Still, they'll soon be out there on stage, Weiss playing drums with a rare finesse and grace, and Coomes sparring with his beloved Roxichord, working to hold together their witty and wonderful pop songs. "It's a strange thing," Coomes says, staring off into the ether. "There's almost no conceivable reason to play music except that you get into a state that's impossible to get in in your normal existence. It's certainly not a lucrative endeavor. There's great moments, but if you were to do the math, it's not worth it. But when you're up there [on stage], you don't think about that. You're in a different realm that's impossible to get at any other way, at least for me." |
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