Your MusicfestNW experience, if you did it right, should have faded into an ill-defined blur by Monday morning, if not earlier. It’s a defining characteristic of music festivals, as hard-wired into the experience as the bad food, expensive beer, and the slow, agonizing mornings that are thus engendered. If the present state of my own short-term memory is any indication, I can be quite certain that I did, in fact, do MusicfestNW right. The state of the notes I painstakingly took is, due to a misexecuted cut-and-paste maneuver, in a similar shambles. Consider, then, the overwhelmingly quixotic task I face as I sit down to record my impressions of a long weekend of sensory overload. What follows is, by necessity, not a cohesive, coherent review of a series of performances so much as a reconstructed running dialogue of vague recollections, half-baked opinions, and rare moments of stunning lucidity. It is, in other words, a snapshot of my state of mind at any given moment, only more so.
Wednesday
Why does this seem like the longest day ever? I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for authorization to tear into the presents. You’d think I’d never been to a concert before, but of course, it’s not just tonight I’m looking forward to – Panda Bear!!! – but the whole long weekend of nothing but kickass music. Okay, throw in the fact that I’m unemployed and thus have nothing productive to do until the rock ’n’ roll starts, and maybe my anxiety makes a bit more sense. But still – Panda Bear!!! Sad, then, that the experience tonight will fail, miserably, to live up to expectations. Devonwho? Who? Devon – oh, forget it. Most apt name in music (after Japandroids, of course). I guess this brand of rhythm-less electronic music might be charitably described as “avant-garde,” but I’m gonna call a spade a spade and settle for boring and forgettable. Maybe this is unfair. When a musical performance inspires an internal “WTF?”, there’s always the possibility that you, the audience, just don’t understand WTF this particular performer is trying to do. Lots of times the WTF shit is the good shit. Tonight, though, it’s just a tepid warmup to Panda Bear!!! Which leads us right to, hands down, the worst performance of my MusicfestNW experience. Panda Bear (that’s right, I’ve stripped him of his italics and exclamation points like I was Obama and he was some insubordinate general) is the stage name of Noah Lennox, Animal Collective’s resident Brian Wilson idolater. And say what you will about the debatable creative merits of sounding just like a guy who’s famous for sequestering himself in a sandbox for like three years, it’s undeniably a hell of a lot better than a bunch of random-ass noise, set, not particularly competently, to a giant screen showing pseudo-psychedelic images so routinely generic that even the most ardent stoner would be bored to tears. Which, sadly, is what we got. Off to a poor start, aren’t we?
Thursday
Things are looking up. Thanks to a strategic retreat from the crowd of half-asleep Panda Bear disappointees, I’m fresh and ready to rock for afternoon shows at Wonder Ballroom – a fact which fails to exercise appropriate influence on my ETA, as I arrive almost half an hour after the music has begun. With only 15 minutes remaining in his set with which to impress me, though, chillwave phenom Washed Out (aka Ernest Greene) totally delivers. Pressed by an adoring audience to squeeze in one more song, Greene busts out 80’s synth tribute “Feel It All Around,” and knocks everybody dead. Outstanding comeback from the depths of the Panda Bear doldrums.
Next up is Phantogram, with their unique “trip-hop’s-not-dead,-it-just-sounds-a-lot-like-indie-pop-now” sound. Which is a totally unfair way to characterize this duo. Their songs are catchy enough to grab you and complex enough to stay interesting. May as well point out as well that, according to an unscientific informal survey of myself, this duo officially wins “Sexiest Band” title for MFNW 2010. A lil’ sumthin’ for the dudes, lil’ sumthin’ for the ladies…yeah, you know what I’m talking about. This is one hella good looking group.
Now pay attention, because here’s where I get creative: instead of sticking around for the sure-fire fun of Ra Ra Riot, I swing over to Mississippi Studios for the relatively unknown Henry Wagons, an Australian country singer armed with golden country pipes, an ironic mustache, and a bizarre and disarming sense of humor. Musically, the Melbourne native is just good ol’ country music, unlikely only in that it’s genesis is in, that’s right, Melbourne. As a performer, though, dude is charismatic as fuck. Dances around the stage like he’s Mick Mars, except without a bunch of frizzy-haired douchebag bandmates to back him up. In fact, Wagons has more stage presence all by himself than most full bands I’ve seen. Noting that the feed from his guitar had abruptly been lost, Wagons stops mid-song and comments, “something fundamental has gone wrong…Fuck’s sake, you’d think I’ve been doing this long enough!” Later, covering Hoyt Axton’s “Never Been to Spain,” Wagons adroitly panders to the local crowd, inserting the lyric, “I’ve never been to Portland/But I like the Voodoo Doughnuts.” As is often the case with the more obscure shows, this one stands out as a particularly special moment in my festival experience. Perhaps word got around, because when I encounter Wagons later in the same evening, taking in some Justin Townes Earle at Berbati’s Pan, he is greeted by at least twice as many people as were in the room for his set. Fame travels fast at MusicfestNW.
Following this flirtation with obscurity, I swing back to the beaten path and head over to the Crystal Ballroom back-to-back dream team of Ted Leo and The Thermals. “There’s never been a bad Ted Leo show,” the official MFNW guide assures me. Well, perhaps, but this certainly wasn’t a particularly good one. Ted Leo songs have always had that tendency to sound alike, but in concert presentation that tendency, at least tonight, is manifesting itself as an unexpected sense of tediousness. It doesn’t help that the sound favors the fuzz of the dual guitars over Leo’s vocals, muddling his distinctive voice and obscuring the lyrics that, in this band more than most, really do matter. Chalk this one up as letdown #2 of MFNW, albeit it a minor one. In any case, I’ve got The Thermals coming up next, and there’s nothing like anti-establishmentism to pick up an audience at a corporate sponsor-laden music festival.
The Thermals, appropriately, take the stage like conquering heroes, opening with the first two tracks from The Body, The Blood, The Machine, “Here’s Your Future” and “I Might Need You to Kill.” The sound is crisp, the kids are jumping, and The Thermals, with smiling faces and acerbic lyrics, are issuing the good-natured “Fuck You!” that has become their signature. It can be hard to take them seriously as a punk band, because they always look like they’re having such a good time, but this band matters, just like the Clash mattered, and more importantly, they’re a hell of a lot of fun.
Now for late night festivities: I’ve got art-metal stalwarts Baroness at Dante’s on my schedule, but I’m torn because my boy Justin Townes Earle (I shook hands with his dad one time, so there!) is playing around the corner at Berbati’s Pan. Biggest conflict of my weekend. As it happens, a compromise is in the works. I go to Dante’s while my friend goes to Berbati’s. I’m expecting a half-empty room for what seems to me to be the redheaded stepchild of MFNW shows. Instead, Dante’s is packed, and the line for the bathroom appears, to my dismay, to be a mutant outgrowth of the line for the door, meaning I’ll be holding my bladder for the foreseeable future. It also means that my fantasy of finding a barstool from which to enjoy this show was pure naivety. Instead, I’m standing in a tightly packed crowd next to a little balding guy in his late 50’s, sporting spectacles, a Lenin goatee, and a decades-old beige jacket. He is perfectly stoic as Baroness begin their set with a progressively heavy riff. Then, when vocalist John Baizley steps to the mic and emits a fantastic, guttural death metal growl, this guy extends his arm at a 45 degree angle, flashes the horns, and then promptly resumes his inconspicuous stoicism. Fuckin’ metal! Yeah, there’re probably haters out there, people who instinctively dismiss this genre as the product of dimwitted aggression and lackluster musicianship, but Baroness are for real. There’s more going on here than the stereotypical image of metal would ever allow for. That said, I can’t shake my hankering for Justin Townes Earle, and having gotten word that Berbati’s remains under capacity, I skip out halfway through the set to finish my night on a very different note.
Justin Townes Earle is as old school as it gets. Last time I saw him, he introduced a Dock Boggs cover by explaining to the audience, “Dock Boggs once used his own wife as a human shield in a gunfight in Bristol, Tennessee. Now that’s country!” He’s less conversational tonight, and even displays some irritation at drunkenly obnoxious fans, but he sounds as good as ever. He combines down-home country with a very modern world-weariness and strategically placed Springsteenisms, a recipe that, given current trends, ought to have made him a darling of the indie scene by now. His performance tonight, leaning toward the slow and mournful and featuring a particularly somber cover of the Replacement’s “Can’t Hardly Wait,” once again reiterates how incredible this dude is. It’s a nice capper on the night, and lends a certain peaceful mood to my meandering trip home across town, where a much-needed bed awaits.
Friday
Male Bonding kicks shit off at Wonder Ballroom. This is a young band, kids really, who have taken the blog scene by storm this past year. I’ve heard the buzz, I’ve checked them out, I’ve been unimpressed. Now is their chance to kick some ass live and change my impression. Instead, they fumble. Their performance, though energetic, lacks entirely anything that is worthy of the attention they’ve received. “Who are these kids,” I jot down in my notes, “bouncing around the stage with their teenage erections?”
Next up is another bunch of kids, Florida’s Surfer Blood. They too have received a considerable amount of buzz, and their debut, Astro Coast, seems destined to end up all over the top-10 lists at the end of the year. Sure, it’s only exploring the same territory that has already been adequately explored on Weezer’s Blue Album, but it’s a solid album nonetheless. Onstage, the band plays it tight. They even show a bit of unexpected swagger, playing louder and heavier renditions of many tunes than appear on the album. It’s hard to get past how young they look, but the performance is that of a much more experienced band, at least until they finish their set with an annoying bout of masturbatory guitar shit. Oh well. You can’t win 'em all, I guess.
My next stop, after a rare break in the action, is my first trip of the festival to the Doug Fir, where a stellar slate of folk/country acts will take me all the way to 2 am. Sean Carey of Bon Iver starts it off with a quiet, understated set of beautifully melodic tunes. Carey’s solo work is, if anything, even more subtle than Bon Iver’s music, and it commands rapt attention to be genuinely appreciated. For the most part, rapt attention is exactly what he gets from the packed room.
Portland’s own Mimicking Birds hold the next slot, perhaps an unfortunate position to be in. The room is certifiably at capacity at this point, and the talkative crowd is apparently more interested in the Cave Singers, who will play next. I swear I see the drummer actually shushing people in the audience at one point, and though the band is pretty good, the hubbub makes it impossible to really enjoy them. It’s becoming apparent that the Cave Singers, perhaps, ought to have been assigned to a larger venue. By the time they come on, the room is bursting with enthusiasm, and the band delivers a stellar performance. This is what Musicfest is all about: a capacity crowd in a small room just hanging on every note. The Cave Singers, an excellent but still relatively obscure band, look on this night like superstars gracing a tiny club with their oversized presence. When did these guys get so big? No matter. There’s a line outside, I’m inside, and everybody is having a hell of a time.
At the conclusion of the fantastic Cave Singers set, my friends take off, but I stick around for the finale, The Tallest Man on Earth. I’ve been hearing everybody rave about this guy ever since The Wild Hunt came out, and as listenable as that album is, it’s never risen above the level of Dylan impersonation in my mind. I’d hoped that seeing him live would alter my opinion. Instead, it strengthens it. Kristian Matsson comes out on the stage looking like he’s breaking in a Freewheelin’-era Dylan costume. His music as performed possesses no dimension that the recorded version lacks, and though it is pleasant, it fails to impress. Ultimately, Matsson’s ‘60’s throwback persona only cements my impression of him as, basically, an anachronism.
Saturday
My Saturday begins with an unofficial day show at Rontoms, where I learn I am entitled, by dint of being a music hack, to free Ninkasi. This is not at all unpleasant, and between the free beers, the sunshine, and a lovely performance by Sara Jackson-Holman, it makes for a wonderful, low-key way to start my day. It will, as it turns out, be the lightest day of the festival for me, probably necessary after the way my Thursday and Friday had gone. My first official show is Barton Carroll at Mississippi Studios, which does little for me aside from insure that, when the Mynabirds come on at 10, I will be safely inside the venue. It’s a good thing, too, because shortly after that set begins, Mississippi reaches capacity. The Mynabirds is a project of Laura Burhenn, who was most recently making entirely dissimilar music as a member of Georgie James. In her current band, she comes off like a young Neko Case. Though the band’s debut album, What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood, is outstanding, their performance is a little stiff. Enjoyable, but not as soulful as I’d hoped.
Following this stint at Mississippi Studios, I make my way back to the Doug Fir, where once again I will finish my night. Tonight’s lineup is the antithesis of what I saw on Friday: Philadelphia’s Free Energy, an offshoot of defunct Hockey Night, followed by Vancouver’s Japandroids, the act that I might be most excited about. Free Energy quickly reveal themselves to be little more than bubblegum pop. Their hit song “Bang Pop” bears a similarity to Hanson’s “Mmm Bop” that stretches well beyond the inanity and verbage of its titular chorus. Nevertheless, the band has a knack for performance, relying on a formula that seems to consist of infectious energy and cheap thrills. The room, surprisingly not full on this night, is bouncing. Hands in the air, fists pumping, people singing along to songs they’ve never heard. (Seriously, once they get through the first chorus, you pretty much know the song. This is how elementary they really are.) It’s the kind of show I don’t want to like, don’t want to give credit to – but I do, in spite of myself. I have a great time, and with the benefit of my second Red Bull in like two hours (making me, still, one of the lesser chemically stimulated people in the room) I’m ready for Japandroids to kick my ass.
Japandroids is, for the uninitiated, comprised of two dudes, two instruments, and a wall of amps. Incidentally, that is about how they sound too. Any apparently musical subtleties that appear on the record must surely be the work of an able producer, because live, these two display as little in the way of craft and musicianship as any act I’ve seen. Indeed, I hadn’t realized how uninteresting a band this was until now. Paradoxically, it also becomes clear to me why so many people like them. Chalk it up to collective delusion, chemical enhancement, or what have you. These guys are fun. Or, rather, everybody is managing to have fun, myself included. Japandroids are, to be clear, two dumb kids – kids who missed the opportunity to see the Gories show the previous night because “Dave tried to hotbox the photobooth at Dante’s and got us all kicked out.” Maybe it’s a nostalgia for that kind of teenage stupidity that gets people going on Japandroids. Or maybe it’s just because they’re loud as shit. Whatever the case may be, they rock the room, bringing the official Saturday festivities to a close. Unofficial reveling, undoubtedly, will continue deep into the night.
Sunday
The final day of MusicfestNW starts off innocently enough: a kid’s show at Kennedy School featuring The Thermals. With arts & crafts tables, popcorn, people in creepy animal costumes and an overly boisterous MC, this shindig is a kid's dream. From infants to 10-year-olds, this place is crawling (literally in many cases) with minors from whom I’m legally obliged to protect my alcoholic beverage. After an awful lot of shenanigans, a lesson about how the weather works, and an ever-so-brief set by Bobby Bare, Jr., The Thermals take the stage, playing, to their eternal credit, an unfiltered, uncensored, totally loud set almost identical to the one I’d seen on Thursday night. The incredible, massive irony of this band playing “Here’s Your Future” to a roomful of jumping, laughing children cannot be overstated. Absolutely incredible. The band, for their part, seems completely at home in the silly environment, with vocalist Hutch Harris telling the kids, “Now in 20 years if anyone asks you if you’ve heard of the Thermals, you can say, ‘Yeah, I was into them when I was like five.’” Priceless.
The real gem for the day, of course, is the headlining event: The National at Pioneer Courthouse Square. That’s not until 7:30, and until then, my impatient ass has to sit through three other openers. Due to my late arrival, I only get to see one song by the first opener, Talkdemonic. This is unfortunate, because of the three openers, this is the one I’m most inclined to like. And what I hear is great, but so short-lived that no fair conclusions can be drawn.
Next, The Helio Sequence, a Portland band that doesn’t seem to be much on the Portland scene of late. Musically, pretty good. I’m enjoying their set, without ever really getting all that into it. Visually, WTF? You’ve got Brandon Summers on guitar, who looks like a normal enough dude, shows no emotion, but occasionally does this little rock ’n’ roll hip thing while he solos that makes it look like he’s having a really fucking good time up there – but ultimately you just can’t be sure, because he’s got all the emotional expressiveness of a comatose Vulcan. Then there’s drummer Benjamin Weikel, who is over in the corner making all these crazy faces, yelling god knows what as he pounds the drums and literally popping a vein out of his forehead that looks like it just might be a serious medical issue in the making. Both musicians managed to look entirely self absorbed, the former in how cool he is, the latter in how spastic.
The penultimate band of the evening is The Walkmen, whom I’ve long expected, and now know, to be complete and utter bores. They walk on stage wearing, to a man, business casual attire (with one exception inexplicably decked out in lumberjack plaid). Clean cut, basically non-expressive, the only sign of normal humanity a strategically untucked section of dress shirt. These guys look like a secret meeting of the High Council of the Reagan Youth. They basically sound like that too, whatever that means. Seriously, this is a band that should be better than it is. A band that somehow manages to be less than the sum of its songs. Their music is good, occasionally really good, but delivered in this fashion that you just can’t believe that anybody in the band cares about the music that they’re making, that none of the musicians is in possession of any of the emotions the songs endeavor to describe. It is a peculiar artistic failure, and the only thing the band seems to be particularly good at is demonstrating exactly how such good songs can be performed to such poor effect.
By contrast, The National can get it done. Superficially a remarkably similar band to the Walkmen, The National’s performance is precisely the opposite: it is more, much more, than the sum of the songs. And the songs are good, there’s no doubt about it. But without seeing the band live, it’s impossible to imagine how incredible a performance they achieve with the material they have. Where on the record the songs all sound more or less alike, as performed live they take on an unexpected dynamism, violating any reasonable estimation of what a National show might sound like. Even more surprising is how lighthearted the band members manage to be between sets. Where the Walkmen were aloof, The National are engaging: telling jokes, laughing amongst themselves, and, in vocalist Matt Berninger’s case, drinking far too much alcohol and freely enjoying the buzz. Then, like flipping a switch, they start playing and are immediately engaged in the emotional weight of the music. When, having let “Squalor Victoria” seemingly spiral out of control, Berninger screams into the mic, “Fuck it up!” the stage lights seem to explode out into the audience and the decibel level climaxes, there is nothing to do but marvel that such a seemingly restrained band can create such a powerful, moving, and delightfully chaotic performance. The U2 comparisons are starting to become ubiquitous, and as I stand in the crowd at Pioneer Square, a mere 20 feet from the stage, I begin to understand. This is what it looks like when a band is at the height of its powers. This is why I’ve been standing here all day, and this is why, of the dozens of bands to perform at the festival this year, these guys get to have the last word. I leave, completely bedazzled. I’ve had an incredible weekend, but this last experience tops it all. I come home, cozy up on the couch with a bowl of cereal, and watch the NFL highlights like any other schmuck who didn’t do anything productive with his weekend. Tomorrow’s Monday, and I’m unemployed…
