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One of the boldest titles attached to any of last year's releases came from English musician Roni Size's drum 'n' bass collective Reprazent, an album called New Forms. The sprawling double CD tossed together sizzling breakbeats, hip-hop raps, jazz interludes, rock bravado, soulful grooves and energized dance music in an attempt to foster a groundbreaking sound. New Forms subsequently found its way to many critics' year-end top-10 lists, but the haughty declaration its title infers proved misleading: It's a well-executed blend of old styles more than a revelatory music experience. I don't fault Size for missing his mark. Reprazent grew out of the music scene in Bristol, a port town in southwestern England that's also home to Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack and Soul II Soul--all inventive and vital artists who have produced some of the most alluring music of the past few years. They did so by responding to their bleak surroundings with a murky, entrancing type of music that, for lack of a better term, has been dubbed trip-hop. Like the musicians of Memphis, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles and Seattle before them, the Bristol crowd deliver a loose-knit artistic statement of consequence to the outside world. So what should we make of our own city's overriding musical trend in the early stages of 1998? In the interest of continuing my profession's tradition of attaching cute names to musical movements, I'll call it "skillbilly"--that is, country, bluegrass and rockabilly forms played with precision. A growing legion of Portland musicians draw from these earlier American styles to convey their own artistic expressions, but unlike their forebears, they didn't arrive at their sound while picking a banjo on a porch in some rural town or thrashing through a set at a roadside jukejoint. Our skillbilly musicians spent countless hours practicing in living rooms and basements on rainy days, or jammed onstage at the LaurelThirst or Ash Street Saloon in front of microbrew-quaffing patrons. Until recently, these bands were relegated to the sidelines of Portland's rock scene, with some, like Golden Delicious, Fernando and Little Sue, occasionally stepping out to play Satyricon or LaLuna. In the past week alone, however, several of this city's prominent and up-and-coming acts took the stage in more splendorous fashion, asserting that they are part of the predominant movement in Portland. Opening a sold-out Elliott Smith show in LaLuna's balcony last Wednesday, Willy Vlautin, the singer/songwriter who leads the electric trio Richmond Fontaine, strapped on an acoustic guitar and teamed with pedal steel player Paul Brainerd for a twangy set of originals that explored themes traceable to Hank Williams' songs: desperation, drinking and scraping by as members of America's not-quite-middle class. At the Crystal Ballroom on Friday, Jr. Samples--a band named for a comedian on the early '70s hillbilly variety show Hee Haw--kicked up a rockabilly torrent complete with faux-hick posturing (the bassist plucks a string that runs the length of a hockey stick!). Most notably, the Countrypolitans and the Flatirons performed to a near-full house of dapper fans dressed in Western fashions at the Crystal on Saturday; the audience may have been lured there by visiting cowboy swing revivalists Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, but it swayed and sashayed to the local opening acts in anticipation. That the skillbilly scene appeals to such sizable Portland audiences is surprising. Though touted as a "next big thing" in the music industry, similar alternative-country bands across the nation spent the last two years establishing a niche rather than sparking a new musical crusade. Unless one of these artists discovers a way to tweak the music with a modern touch, alt-country may soon go the way of the cocktail nation. Unfortunately, much of what we've seen and heard so far in Portland falls under the rubric of retro rather than revolutionary. When a talented quintet such as the Flatirons relies on a clever countrified cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" to win converts, it's amusing and enjoyable, but it hardly breaks new ground. Perhaps these bands don't aspire to present new forms, as did Roni Size and Reprazent. Portland's skillbilly players may well be content to entertain a roomful of fans, drink a few pints of hefeweizen, pack their gear and go home. If so, it's their loss as well as ours. The groundswell of support evident at clubs large and small, from the LaurelThirst to the Crystal, empowers these acts with an opportunity to recast existing styles into something fresh and exciting, which after all is the foundation of rock 'n' roll. |
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