More news from Portland, Oregon
A few days after I discover (many years too late), The Decemberists, from Portland, Oregon, I get an e-mail from Greg Borenstein, which goes along the following lines
“My name is Greg Borenstein, and I play with the Portland, Oregon band “At Dusk” (the quotes are meant to indicate title, not irony, for the record). We have been based in, recording in, and playing around Portland for a couple years now, although we’ve known each other since the glorydays of adolescence. We recently finished our first successful cross-country tour, which took us as far afield as New York’s Mercury Lounge and Toronto’s Wavelength.
I am writing you because I’ve been reading 50 Quid for some time and it occurred to me that you might like our music. It falls somewhere on the exciting indie-rock-to-post-rock spectrum, influenced in turn by Philip Glass, Sonic Youth, Romanian Gypsy Music (not a joke), Pavement and The Byrds. In terms of a direct comparison, our closest fellow travelers are probably Mission of Burma, Unwound and Blonde Redhead – but with more West Coast harmony and less East Coast angst.”
Now there is a fair chance that he’s written to about 500 bloggers substituting the relevant name each time. But I’m nowhere near cynical enough to think that. So, I took a trip to At Dusk’s site (Where Greg keeps a blog, among other things), and downloaded some of their music; and you know what - very fine it is too. I included Greg’s description of their music to save myself from having to come up with one myself (or just copying it out and pretending it’s all mine): but it pretty much does what he says.
Rather like The Decemberists, they sound incredibly English, so I’ve got it into my head that Portland - which I’ve never visited - is some sort of shrine to English indy pop where cool kids take ‘mockney’ classes at highschool and young couples - either that or some smart UK entrepreneur has set up an indy music outsourcing operation in Oregon, because it’s much cheaper there than Manchester, where the price of wannabe popstars has frankly got ridiculous.
They also have a bit of that folk music/ psychaedelic thing going on (hence the reference to Romanian Gypsy music, I think) - it’s not quite as effective as the Coral;/Zuton way of doing things, but it stops their music getting boring.
Greg - if you’re reading this, leave a comment! Any more Portland band suggestions welcome…