The Deal: Portland veterans deliver a welcome middle finger.
The Good: My astute Shuffle colleague Bryan Reed notes that what passes for indie rock these days is just too gosh-darn polite, sonically and aesthetically. Not so this titanic slab of outsider angst and guitar-pop noise that stands tall beside Crooked Rain Crooked Rain and You’re Living All Over Me (yeah, it’s pretty freakin’ good). Sam Coomes stares into the maw of middle-aged conformity and the current sac-less state of colonialist rock and what he sees pisses him off. So he puts aside the Quasi keyboards (mostly) for epic scuzz-and-fuzz guitar, joins elemental forces with bassist Joanna Bolme and atom-mashing ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, and like avenging angels they bludgeon the bejesus out of Beatles’ pop (“Everything & Nothing At All”), garage blooze (“Rockabilly Party”), ’70s punk (“Little White Horse”) and widescreen Northwest rock (“Bye Bye Blackbird”). Quasi emerge from the primal chaos on mile-high melodies and with a cynic’s cockeyed hope, powered by the same nihilistic fission and catharsis that made Little Richard howl, Iggy search and destroy, Cortez a killer, and Malkmus stop breathin’. It matters not a whit what you call it, just that it runs its voltage through you. As Coomes sings here in fist-shaking defiance, “You can say your race is run/Or you can rise up on the sound/Into the center of the sun.”
The Bad: “Howler,” a 40-second throwaway that sounds like a pack of mating hyenas.
The Verdict: Indie rock is dead, bang this American Gong instead.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2010.
