Eleven PDX Magazine October 2014 by Eleven PDX

contents

ELEVEN PDX MAGAZINE ISSUE NO. 5

THE USUAL 4 Letter from the Editor 4 Staff Credits

VOLUME 4

FEATURES Local Feature 11 The Shivas

Cover Feature 15 The Kills

new music 5 Aural Fix The Preatures Bad Rabbits Duologue

FILM Watch Me Now 21 Film Editorial: Monsters, Movies, Ourselves Instant Queue Review: Witches Edition

7 Short List 7 Album Reviews Wampire Minus The Bear Foxygen Flying Lotus

COMMUNITY Literary Arts 23 Portland writer Luke B. Goebel

Neighborhood of the Month 26 Chinatown

LIVE MUSIC 9 Musicalendar An encompassing overview of concerts in PDX for the upcoming month. But that’s not all–the Musicalendar is complete with a venue map to help get you around town.

Visual Arts 27 Portland artist Yannick Hamon

more online at elevenpdx.com

HELLO PORTLAND! Another Halloween looms and it's time to get costume-y (as if every day in Portland weren't already "wear-whatever-youwant day"). Creating the perfect getup shouldn't be something that Kills [p. 15] you. Here are a few suggestions. First, there are plenty of classics, such as a creature from a monster movie [p. 21] or something as simple as an animal costume, maybe a Fox(ygen) or (Minus The) Bear [p. 7]. Next, as visual artist Yannick Hamon [p. 27] states, "Portland is a very creative city..." so don't be afraid to get wacky! Plus, there are no wrong choices of costumes. For myself, I'm considering either the TARDIS, Wesley from The Princess Bride, or an offensive, insensitive racial, religious or societal "joke" costume. Okay, check that, there are wrong choices. Let's all be sure to not do that last one. So before you Lose Yr Mind [p. 25] trying to come up with your best dress-to-impress Hallo-garb, remember this: simple is good (and complex isn't bad), don't be a jerk, and let's have a super happy fun time! Âť

- Ryan Dornfeld, Editor in Chief

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EXECUTIVE STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF Ryan Dornfeld CREATIVE DIRECTOR Dustin Mills SECTION EDITORS LOCAL FEATURE: Wendy Worzalla LITERARY ARTS: Billy Dye, Scott Mchale VISUAL ARTS: Mercy McNab FILM: Rachael Haigh, Bex Silver

online Mark Dilson, Kim Lawson Michael Reiersgaard

get involved getinvolved@elevenpdx.com www.elevenpdx.com twitter.com/elevenpdx facebook.com/elevenmagpdx

graphic DESIGN Dustin Mills Alex Combs

GENERAL INQUIRIES info@elevenpdx.com

COPY EDITING Megan Freshley Paul Maziar

ADVERTISING sales@elevenpdx.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Brandy Crowe, Billy Dye, Eric Evans, Donovan Farley, Veronica Greene, Rachael Haigh, Casey Hardmeyer, Kelly Kovl, Alisha Kelsey, Travis Leipzig, Ethan Martin, Scott McHale, Aaron Mills, Kela Parker, Matthew Sweeney, Charles Trowbridge photographers Mercy McNab, Aa Mills, Todd Walberg, Caitlin M. Webb DISTRIBUTION / PROMO The Redcoats

eleven west media group, llc Ryan Dornfeld Dustin Mills

SPECIAL THANKS Our local business partners who make this project possible. Our friends, families, associates, lovers, creators and haters. And of course, our city!

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 4

new music aural fix

AURAL FIX

Photo by Cybele Malinowski

UP AND COMING MUSIC FROM THE NATIONAL SCENE

THE PREATURES

It’s easy to forget Australia has a happening music scene, because most of the times you're listening to Australian bands nobody even knows they’re from Australia. But think about it. Which of these bands is from Australia: Bee Gees, Jet, INXS, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wolfmother, The Vines? All of them. Even Savage Garden was from Australia! Point is, Australia tends to churn out rocking groups. Luckily for us, the best of them always make that long trans-Pacific flight to America where new fans await. The latest in this tradition of Aussie Rock are Sydney darlings The Preatures, who’ve been blowing up the scene down under with their surprisingly fresh rock and roll. After winning the coveted Vanda and Young Songwriting Competition with their syncopated, danceable single “Is This How You Feel,” The Preatures have come to the U.S., playing stages at Coachella, Bonnaroo, and The Jimmy Kimmel Show. That single rides along pretty damn smoothly, with singer Izzi Manfredi’s calm, matter-of-fact phrasing in the verse giving way to just enough chorus to maintain the tension and not give it all away. She’s got a big voice, kinda reminiscent of Patti

BAD RABBITS

Photo by Kevin Posey

Boston’s eclectic ten-piece Electric Collective sometimes served as the back-up band for Slick Rick before halving and reworking into the quintet Bad Rabbits. That should give you some idea of Bad Rabbits’ style—they are funky and happy and go with the flow. It’s the best throwback of tunes with refreshing twists. But the most important thing here? It’s booty. Unashamed, in your face, let’s-dance-all-night booty. While that may be the most important focus, there is a lot going on

5 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

Smith’s grit or Stevie Nicks’ laid-back charisma. In fact, it’s hard not to make some Fleetwood Mac comparisons, with Manfredi’s male counterpart Gideon Bensen taking over the mic on two songs from their latest five song EP. And he’s got a gritty, crooning voice too, although he’s more Chris Isaak than Mick Fleetwood. The instrumentation on the songs from their first two EPs is dark but energetic, with lots of bendy, tremelo’d-out guitar picking (Jack Moffitt) against tight drum (Luke Davison) and bass (Thomas Champion) grooves that seem to flip rhythmic accents at a moment’s notice. It's smartly organized music. And with their first full album, Blue Planet Eyes, set for a September 26 release, they seem poised to be Australia’s next great gift to the world of rock and roll. » - Ethan Martin

here. Their 2013 album American Love is their take on melding sounds and influences. They are a diverse group—some first generation Americans—with families hailing from West Africa, India, and Argentina. Fredua Boakye’s vocals playfully narrate along fast beats and fat bass in an environment of late-seventies disco, R&B, and Teddy Riley’s New Jack Swing (Riley is also a friend who helped produce debut EP Stick Up Kids). There are retro synths and down key harmonics (such as “Dance With You”), and sometimes outlandish choruses. They can bring to mind Cameo, Outkast, or perhaps a little Maxwell. But with the presence of two guitarists (Santiago Araujo and Salim Akram), they beef up the R&B and soul into a fuller sound weighted with rock, even laying down a few heavy riffs as on “We Can Roll.” The guys seem to embrace transition and experiment often. In the past, they have played metal house shows and the Vans Warped Tour, do a fantastic cover of Deftones' “Sextape,” and recently went adventuring into acoustic territory with this year’s Dusted. The album uses piano, shifting rhythms, and Boyake’s belting and breathing vocals to create an entirely different mood for Bad Rabbits' singles, particularly the sensual beauty and strength behind “Can’t Back Down.” Their latest single, “Better Days,” seems to grow further by fusing a more polished pop sound with soul, while wishing everyone well and calling to action to share positivity and pay it forward. » - Brandy Crowe

new music aural fix

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS

OCTOBER AT

1 PETUNIA & THE VIPERS

CASEY NEILL & THE NORWAY RATS

2 THE THURSTON MOORE BAND

DUOLOGUE

SMEGMA

3 HELIO SEQUENCE Duologue, a five-piece British band that began as frontmen Tim Digby-Bell and Toby Leeming’s bedroom project recently released their new record Never Get Lost. The first thing that strikes one about Never Get Lost is the enormous step forward it represents when compared with their debut, Song & Dance—a welcome change that is no doubt due to the fact that Duologue chose to produce Never Get Lost completely on their own. Song & Dance was not a bad album per se, but the dismal string arrangements and the inevitable minor piano chords felt forced and bland. Perhaps it was the result of an outside influence’s attempt to make the band more palatable. The new record sees them moving more into their element. Duologue are not necessarily innovative, as they seem to take more than a few cues from Atoms for Peace. One is tempted to think of them as a more angular, glitchy Coldplay. Digby-Bell’s keening vocals give the music something familiar to hold onto. However, the star of the show is no doubt Toby Leeming’s dynamic, lush programming. Violinst Seb Dilleyston, guitarist Toby Lee,

and bassist Ross Stone shine in the live setting, though on the new record their presence is a bit subdued. From a generation of bands already deeply influenced by later Radiohead, Duologue are certainly one of the most interesting. » - Matthew Sweeney

QUICK TRACKS

LIKE A VILLAIN

4 STONE IN LOVE JOURNEY TRIBUTE STEPHANIE SCHNEIDERMAN

5 WAKEY!WAKEY!

BEN FIELDS • LUKE WESLEY

7 NICK WATERHOUSE PEP

8 FINK

“MEMEX” Duologue show off their considerable chops as mixers and programmers on this hypnotic track, where mutant dubstep and auto-tune are used to very ethereal affect. Check the music video for this, too.

B “THIS IS HAPPENING” A bright spot on this rather melancholy sophomore album. A humming bed of synths is a cool touch to add to Digby-Bell’s maybe petulant, maybe regretful refrain: “There’s only one thing in your head.”

PETE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

19 DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR. MINIATURE TIGERS MADI DIAZ

20 J RODDY WALSTON & THE BUSINESS FLY GOLDEN EAGLE

21 & 22 POLIÇA

WEB OF SUNSETS

23 & 24 RACHAEL YAMAGATA 25 THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE JULY TALK

DOUGLAS DARE

9 CARBON LEAF 10 SALLIE FORD

SUMMER CANNIBALS

18 GRIFFIN HOUSE

11 SONDRE LERCHE TEEN

26 DOUG FIR GOSPEL BRUNCH FEATURING LINDA HORNBUCKLE'S OLD TIME GOSPEL HOUR

26 THE WILD FEATHERS THE APACHE RELAY DESERT NOISES

12 RUBBLEBUCKET

27 BERNHOFT

14 BAHAMAS

28 NACHO PICASSO

ROYAL CANOE BASIA BULAT

THE WIND + THE WAVE MYKE BOGAN • GIFTED GAB HOSTED BY COOL NUTZ

15 PICKWICK

29 POND (AUS)

US LIGHTS

16 TOGETHER PANGEA MOZES & THE FIRSTBORN THE MEMORIES AJ DAVILA & TERROR AMOR 17 BLITZEN TRAPPER HAND OF THE HILLS

30 CORNERS

DRINKING FLOWERS PSYCHOMAGIC

rsary Come to an Annive ter En Month Show and ow Sh 15 20 a to Win o! Tw r fo ss Pa

Download our 830 E BURNSIDE / 503.231.WOOD Twitter@dougfirlounge FREE iPhone App! www.dougfirlounge.com Instagram@dougfirlounge Advance tickets at ticketfly.com

All shows 8pm doors/9pm show • 21+ unless noted • box office open ½ hour before doors Serving Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Late Night Covered Smoking Patio, Fireplace Room, Free WIFI

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 6

new music album reviews

ALBUM REVIEWS This Month’s best R Reissue

L Local release

L Wampire

Short List The Shivas You Know What To Do

Caribou Our Love We Were Promised Jetpacks Unravelling Lil Wayne The Carter V Bass Drum Of Death Rip This Dinosaur Feathers Control

Bazaar Polyvinyl Records

Slingshotting off the momentum built from their 2013 breakout album, Curiosity, Wampire take another reassuring lunge forward with Bazaar, out October 7 on Polyvinyl Records. Similar to their debut, Bazaar was also produced by Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s bass player, Jacob Portrait, and the new album retains the familiar vintage air of analogue synth and the

Melvins Hold It In

straight-to-tape live tracking feel that they’ve shown us before. But this is clearly not some one-trick-pony shit. The core duo expanded to a five-piece and then banged out nearly a year of touring together after Curiosity, and it seems that these dudes have gotten confident in their songwriting and found their groove. "The Amazing Heart Attack" kicks the album off with an upbeat fierceness reminiscent to “The Hearse,” but served with a heavier dose of loose but confident riffage. Then they kick into straight-up rock and roll on “Bad Attitude,” lead by funky, driving bass and interspersed fuzzed-out guitar solos. The album’s lead single "Wizard Staff" sexes things up with a slowed down tempo, tantalizing lead guitar and spurts of saxophone solos doing a little dance in the sand. “Too Stoned” is another personal favorite, with the two minute intro of an early '70s-esque blues-based psych jam before exploding back into one final minute of their signature dark power pop sound. » - Travis Leipzig moment, and that's pretty much what we have here.

The Game Year Of The Wolf

They have had an amazing ability to transfer seamlessly between different

Cold War Kids Hold My Home

musical flavors while keeping within

Jeff The Brotherhood Dig The Classics EP

the realm of their own unique sound—

Primus Primus & The Chocolate Factory

listening sound of “Invented Memory,”

from the jazzy and almost easyto “Cat Calls and Ill Means” (which

Thurston Moore The Best Day Run The Jewels RTJ2 Buy it

Steal it

Toss it

sounds like a borderline punk rock homage). The band seems to leave no corner of the spectrum unturned. The

Minus The Bear Lost Loves Dangerbird Records

only thing that is missing from this is lost truck/dead dog country, which personally, I am very okay with. Minus The Bear has been a band that is full of surprises, and this album

Minus The Bear is a band known for being in a constant state of metamorphosis. Constantly spanning genres and styles. Their latest album is a compilation of previously unreleased tracks that were recorded throughout

facebook.com/elevenmagpdx @elevenpdx

7 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

their thirteen-year career. Imagine witnessing eons of evolution in a single

is a great display of this. It can be a fun voyage of discovery to search the nooks and crannies of the mind of a very complicated band. The album may not please everyone, but the people that it does please will get to be very pleased. » - Aaron Mills

new music album reviews

Foxygen ...And Star Power Jagjaguwar Records After a drama-filled 2013, Foxygen return with 80-minute concept double album ...And Star Power, where the duo is backed by the extraterrestrial punk band Star Power (according to the press release anyway). Star Power finds Foxygen stretching their sound to the absolute limit, incorporating found sounds, '70s soft-rock, and spacey prog. Foxygen’s Sam France and Jonathan Rado were mentioning as far back as a year ago that

Flying Lotus You're Dead! Warp Records

Is it too early make a nomination for Rap Album of the Year? Maybe, but I’ll do it anyway. Here is Flying Lotus—the most innovative producers on the west coast teaming up with quite possibly one of the best contemporary rappers, Kendrick Lamar, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and even Snoop Dogg! It does not even approach disappointing. With

their next album was heavily inspired by Todd Rundgren’s groundbreaking early '70s repertoire—and boy oh boy, they were not exaggerating. The album is so unabashedly Rundgren-esque I had to double check to see if the tracks “Coulda Been My Love” and “Everyone Needs Love” weren’t actually just re-titled covers of Something/Anything? tunes. The similarities don’t end there, however. The album’s highly fragmented song cycle is sequenced almost entirely like Rundgren’s ‘73 mindbending progpop opus A Wizard, A True Star. Nine of Star Power’s 24 tracks come in at under two and a half minutes, with stream-ofconsciousness melodies interspersed by lo-fi jamming and tape hiss which makes their ramshackle 2013 breakthrough Ambassadors of Peace & Magic sound downright slick. Having said all that though, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are some seriously great moments on this album, particularly the infectious brassy power-pop of lead-off single “How Could You Really” and the Embryonic era Flaming Lips-styled noise collage of “Cosmic Vibrations.” And despite the record's obvious indulgences, Foxygen

have shown a remarkable discipline by not packing too many ideas into one song, instead spreading them out amongst the album’s four sides and knowing when to utilize their sparse sound to full effect. Another thing I couldn’t help notice about Star Power is just how tired these guys sound. After a year of turmoil that most modern bands don’t see in a lifetime, it doesn’t come as a surprise that these two are a little world-weary, and the resulting record actually benefits from the introspection. You have to hand it to these guys for sticking it out through such tabloid type humiliation and responding with a statement as unapologetic and adventurous as Star Power. Despite the Rundgren-worship of the record’s first half, Star Power’s meandering space-garage sound suits Foxygen well. And although the album’s second half runs out of steam pretty quick and certainly would have benefitted from a trimming, there’s something admirable about a band this young with this amount of relative success going all in when the odds are stacked against them. » - Casey Hardmeyer

You’re Dead!, Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison) mixes jazz fusion with modern rap, and it’s nice to hear some smooth beats and heady instrumentation mixed in with modern hip-hop. He broke the mold a while back with albums like Cosmogramma, and has not looked back. What’s so refreshing about Flying Lotus is that he does not just sample old stuff and alter it. He layers his own beats, vocals, and instrumentation in a very complex way that sometimes sounds like that real cool experimental jazz of old. Did I mention Kendrick Lamar is on this album? The track is “Never Catch Me” and is almost completely off the chain. The intro is long, with jazzy elements that give way to Lamar’s electronically compressed vocals. This treatment really works, giving it an old school yet progressive feel. Kendrick Lamar rapping about life, death, and the afterlife may be more highbrow than the usual, but it’s refreshing to hear some more philosophical themes explored. Smooth bass solos, and tinny high-hats blended with trippy beats finish the song off nicely.

The most impressive track is "Coronus, the Terminator." It’s definitely one of the most psychedelic songs Flying Lotus offers, with layers of backwards strings, Niki Randa’s alluring vocals, heavy bass lines, and natural sounds that create a beautiful soundscape, filled with light. Herbie Hancock guests on two tracks: the intro, “Tesla,” with his signature quick, ticking drums, and on “Moment of Hesitation.” It’s great to see Ellison going back for inspiration from Herbie Hancock, who may only be known to some old enough to remember the “Rockit” video that was all over MTV back in the day—but he has had so much influence on funk and R&B, especially with the use of the synth. Even if Flying Lotus doesn’t win an award for You’re Dead!, the direction that he has taken rap music with his unique production method is groundbreaking. He’s really changed the game, much like Miles Davis and John Coltrane did to jazz back in the sixties. This album is for anyone who appreciates music and is willing to broaden their horizons. » - Scott McHale

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 8

live OCTOBER crystal ballroom

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1332 w burnside

Roseland Theater

8 nw 6th 10 Yasiin Bey | Lilla 11 Twenty One Pilots 12 Joey Bada$$

16-17 Alt-J

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Doug fir

830 e burnside

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mississippi studios 3939 n mississippi

Merchandise | Lower | Arctic Flowers Bishop Allen | Trummors | The Lower 48 Vinnie Dewayne | Mic Capes | Maze Koroma Fujiya & Miyagi | Magic Touch | Strategy Genders | Grandparents } The Domestics The Whigs | Greylag | Joel Magid Wildcat! Wildcat! | White Hinterland | Superhighway Too Many Zooz | Neka & Kahlo | DJ HWY 7 Pins Badbadnotgood | 1939 Ensemble Ex Hex/Speedy Ortiz | Blesst Chest Sinkane | Helado Negro | Grapefruit Sean Rowe | Water Tower | Windus Catfish & The Bottlemen Federico Aubele Asgeir | Low Roar O'Death | Stone Jack Jones Perfume Genius | Matteah Baim Alejandro Escovedo/Peter Buck Ema | Magic Mouth Vacationer | Brick + Mortar Jeff Austin | Left Coast Country Wolf Eyes | Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting

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live OCTOBER wonder ballroom 128 ne russell

holocene

1001 se morrison

rontoms

600 e burnside

eastburn

722 E Burnside

426 sw washington

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kelly’s olympian

5 12 26

The Bylines Eat Off Your Banjo Concert Series: The Fireweeds Plugg88 DJ Espinoza Eric John Kaiser Perk! | The Way Outside | DJ Rhienna Next 2 the Tracks | DJ Wobli DJ Kenny 80s Night Keith Kenny Austin Stewart Quartet | DJ Gregarious Buck Outta Limits

bossanova ballroom

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 15 16 17 18 19 22 24 30 31

Carroll The Minders | Eyelids Haunted Summer

1800 e burnside

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9 10 16 18 30

Comedy Open Mic (every Sunday) Bunker Sessions Open Mic (every Monday 8pm) Eye Candy VJ’s (every Monday 9pm) Late Tunes with KPSU DJs (every Tuesday) Sarcastic Dharma Society | Whitney Ballen Towering Trees | Wild & Scenic Natural Remedy | Outta Limits | Inherit Earth Daydream Machine | Soft Shadows | The Foreign Resort

3 4 5 14

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features OCTOBER kelly's olympian (continued) 16 17 18 19 23 25 31

bunk bar 11 1028 se water 10 11 12 14 16 17 27 31

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LOCAL FEATURE

The Shivas

t’s a lovely September evening, and The Shivas are kickin’ it on their Northeast porch surrounded by fallen leaves. Jared has just returned from a

trip overseas, jet-lagged and running on one of hour of sleep. Eric grabs me a

Photo by Mercy McNab

Robert Mannering: Money’s always there when you need it, somehow. KL: It’ll work itself out. IH: That stuff grows on trees. 11: Most of the songs on You Know What To Do sound like they could be on the compilation It Came From the Garage! It’s gritty, surfy, '60s-influenced. . . what were the main influences for the album? What kind of sound were you guys going for this time around?

chair and ELEVEN sits down with The Shivas to talk about their upcoming 4th album, the trials and tribulations of tour, milkshakes, and recording

13 2315 ne alberta THE SECRET SOCIETY 14 116 NE RUSSELL the knock back

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white eagle 15 836 n russell 7 8 9 10

Singer/Songwriter Showcase (Mondays) The Junebugs The Hilldogs Coma Figura | No More Parachutes | Dedere Dear Drummer | Dirty Revival | Jacob Westfall

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with Calvin Johnson at K Records’ Dub Narcotic Studio. ELEVEN: As the release of your 4th album approaches, what are you looking forward to the most? Ian Hartley: I’d say going on tour. Kristin Leonard: Yeah, touring it around. 11: Is there anything you’re nervous about? Jared Molyneux: Running out of money maybe, but not that nervous about it. Eric Shanafelt: It’s always like a constant fear.

IH: Michael Bublé, Jimmy Buffet. . . ES: Well, we recorded it in a completely different setting. It was totally on tape—all analogs, no computers in the room even. All the equipment we used was really old, so it kind of affected it in that way a lot. JM: Yeah, since there were no computers or anything, we just had a set amount of tracks to work with on each song. And so everything was forced to be a little bit more stripped down. So it was influenced, I think, even a little more by the circumstances than by anything in particular—like any bands or anything like that—just the process. We did it out of town, up in Olympia, so we would have to go back and forth. We would work for prolonged periods while we were up there, and then come back here and not be able to do anything on it for a little while. I think all of those things kind of shaped it a lot in that way.

11: You have recorded with Calvin Johnson a couple times now at Dub Narcotic Studios, and the partnership seems to work very well. Besides his experience, how or why do you think the partnership works so well?

happy with where we are at the moment. I’m really happy with where we seem to be going, so I think that everything that we’ve done to put us in this position right now—it’s really hard to have any complaints or bad feelings. You just kind of see a lot of people who are kind

KL: It just clicks. ES: He’s down to try anything. Which is all you have to do—that’s the only thing you need to be able to do. KL: He’s really appreciative of being really hands-on and being really in control of your album. RM: He’s very good at giving direction while letting you kind of do what you want at the same time. 11: The Shivas have been together since high school. Are your 16-yearold selves happy with where you are at now? KL: More than happy. I feel like the band has changed a whole lot. Every year I look back on the previous year and I’m really satisfied with how we’re doing. It’s been a steady climb. JM: I just hoped that we’d still be doing it in some capacity. The fact that we are and we are still able to tour and make records. . . ES: It’s still really fun. RM: Yeah, it’s true. We’re also really good friends with each other. JM: Yeah, totally! None of us hate each other, which is really cool for me [laughter]. Yeah, we get along way better than I think would be expected—not that I would expect us not to, but just, you know, you put five people in a car to live together for months on end and a lot of people would kill each other. IH: I’ve been in lots of bands, but I’ve never been in a band where everybody gets along until now. This one is real functional.

of in the same game and making the same moves, but they hold on to all the negativity and complaints about things. Sometimes there’s a worry that thinking like that could sort of prevent you from making the right steps to get to the next place, but we keep focused and move forward. 11: You guys always seem to be touring. What are the ups and downs of life on the road?

features OCTOBER white eagle (continued) Radio Giants Dirty Looks Jackson Boone Young Rebel Set The Strumbellas | Jim Creek Sean Flinn & The Royal We | James Dean Kindle Joytribe | Lesser Bangs Copper & Congress | Spirit Lake | Nick Flotz Pegi Young & The Survivors

SLABTOWN

1033 NW 16TH

close all the time, physically. Very cozy. IH: I like to sleep in the van. ES: Ian sleeps in the van. It gets too moist in there for me. IH: Sometimes it’s more comfortable. There was one place that was pretty pukey and I didn’t want to stay there. JM: I think for me the biggest upside to going on tour is just not being at home. Not having to go to school or whatever. I mean we just get to see different friends each day and play music. ES: We get to play a show every night. We used to play shows all the time when we were first starting out—like every weekend in Portland. You can’t really do that in the same city anymore because people will get sick of you. So when we go on tour, you just get to play every day. JM: I think that’s forced us to go on tour more. We just got booking agents for the United States and Europe a few months ago, and so they’re the ones that put together all the stuff that we’re

11: Knowing what you know now, is there anything you wish you could change or would have done differently?

gonna do coming up. I think we’re going

ES: No, I think we learned all the things that we know from any mistakes we may have made. RM: It’s true. I mean, there’s like small tiny things that at the time you’re like, “Oh, maybe I would have thought about that differently,” but I’m really

and be a big name around. You can get

to do a lot more after that. RM: I think it’s possible to be from a town and just work the town really hard really comfortable doing that, but to me it’s way more satisfying to leave town on the regular and go play other cities all over the country, meet new people, and to feel like you’re doing well and making progress.

alhambra theatre JM: It’s definitely cozy. We’re all very

4118 se hawthorne

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MOLOKO

Taste the nightlife of Mississippi. Over 40 house infused liquors. Specialty absinth cocktails. Open until 2am every day. N PORTLAND 3967 N Mississippi (97227) 503.288.6272 molokopdx.com

hawthorne theatre 1507 se 39th

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19 ALADDIN THEATER 3017 SE MILWAUKIE 20 VALENTINES

232 SW ANKENY

The Lone Bellow Greg Brown Angus & Julia Stone David Grisman & Del McCoury The Pimps of Joytime | Moonhooch Swahn Mullins | Max Gomez An Evening with Terry Bozzio The Psychedelic Furs | The Lemonheads Patty Griffin Frazey Ford of the Be Good Tanyas | The Bros Landreth Leon Russell Elephant Revival | Rushad Eggleston

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features OCTOBER east end

21 203 se grand goodfoot 22 the 2845 Se stark 7 8 9 11 15 18 22 23 29 30

Sonic Forum Open Mic Night (Mondays) Soul Stew w/ DJ Aquaman (Fridays) Family Funktion Jessica Lurie | Trio Subtonic w/ Dan Balmer Eleven Eyes | The Plutons Jujuba OU w/Amy Deio | All The Apparatus Robert Walter's 20th Congress The Rivera | Screens Dark matter Transfer | Yak Attack Chicago Afrobeat Project McTuff | Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey

owl social club 23 white 1305 se 8th 4 Big Business | Thrones

theater 24 star 13 nw 6th

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The Drums | Beverly | We Miss the Earth Nasalrod | Die Robot | Needles & Pizza | Kim DeLacy Lady Rizo The Darlins | Tommy Tutone | Terry Rob Big Freedia The Slackers Metronomy Fernando | Old Light | Mike Coykendall & Little Sue La Santa Cecilia | Luzelena Mendoza & Edna Vazquez THE FIRKIN TAVERN Located on the west side of Ladd’s, the Firkin Tavern features an astounding selection of craft beers to enjoy inside or on our patio. Art enthusiasts will enjoy a variety of local artwork on display and sold comission-free! SE LADD'S 1937 SE 11th Ave (97214) 503.206.7552 | thefirkintavern.com

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26 ROTTURE/BRANX 315 SE 3rd

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LOUNGE 27 TONIC 3100 NE SANDY 7 9 10 14 16 17

13 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

KL: And also just knowing that each tour is going to be better than the last, because that’s always how it’s been. Coming up on each tour I just get super excited. I’m ready to leave town. JM: Yeah, I think we’re getting pretty ready to go. ES: Also, not working. RM: I think one thing that surprised me was how much time there was to kill. There’s long drives. There’s a lot of hanging around and getting to venues two or three hours before anybody else is there, being in a city where we don’t know anybody. You kind of have to, or maybe don’t have to, but it helps me to sort of be good at being bored. JM: Find ways to entertain yourself and have fun hanging out with each other.

KL: I’m excited for New Orleans. JM: Yeah, we’ve never played New Orleans before. ES: We’ve tried a bunch of times, though. RM: I’m excited to go back to Toronto. JM: Yeah, Toronto. We’re playing this festival in Joshua Tree which should be really cool. There are a bunch of bands from Portland that we’re friends with, too, that are going to play. That should be really fun. It’s called Desert Stars. RM: We’re doing some shows through the Midwest with some friends of ours from Chicago—a band called The Lemons. They are really great people and a really great band. JM: Also, Today’s Hits. RM: Oh are they really? Oh sweet!

11: For this upcoming tour, where are the places you’re looking forward to going to the most?

11: The Shivas are always out and about at shows whether it’s a local or a touring band. Who’s on your radar?

features Photo by Todd Walberg

dantes

350 w burnside

FIRKIN TAVERN 1937 SE 11TH

Sam Densmore | Zach Bryson & His Natural Born Easemen The New Not Normals | Rocket 3 | Wet Trident Alder Street

the waypost 2120 n williams

8 9 10 11 16 17 18 20 22 23 24 31

2 3 10

HOLLYWOOD THEATRE A not-for-profit organization whose mission is to entertain, inspire, educate and connect the community through the art of film while preserving an historic Portland landmark. NE HOLLYWOOD 4122 NE Sandy Blvd (97212) 503.493.1128 | hollywoodtheatre.org

RM: I feel like Portland’s a good town for that. A lot of people support each other—really helpful and encouraging each other. JM: I think so, too. RM: It’s part of why I like making music in this town and having a lot of musical friends around this town. ES: There’s a lot of good stuff to enjoy out there, too. I like Mister Tang. RM: Yeah, Mister Tang have been killing it. ES: Yeah, we went to high school with them. They are like my little sister’s age and they hang out and it all kind of comes together. JM: Recently we went to this party down the street at this house that did shows up until really recently called The Hive. Our friends who have this band called Jollapin Jasper played and they killed. Yeah, Mike [Little] did the artwork for the new record and for the 7” we put out right before. Yeah, he’s

great. I mean, visually and sonically he knows where it’s at. RM: I’m really into Honey Bucket at the moment. JM: Oh yeah, they’re cool. RM: Yeah, they’re fun. Just like a really stripped down 3-piece band. IH: They have a song about the day when all of The Beatles are dead—like when all of The Beatles are finally dead. It’s a really good song. RM: Yeah, the songs are just like really happy. They kind of have these sad introspective moments, and the drumming is just kind of jazzy. IH: They’ve got a certain edge to them. RM: They’re good—I think they are one of the most underrated bands in this town. » - Wendy Worzalla

The Shivas celebrate the release of You Know What To Do November 8 @ Bunk Bar

Laurelthirst pub 2958 ne glisan

analog cafe & Theater 720 se hawthorne

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4 7 9 11 12 17 18 25 26

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 14

t’s not often that you come across artists that play— successfully—in more than one medium. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, the duo that comprise the bluesy punk band The Kills, are already unique musical talents in their own right. But rather than content themselves to the musical realm, both have managed to branch out into other areas, like painting and photography, and, to the pleasant surprise of Mosshart, have seen notable success. Where do they find the time? For most mortals, the time comes by picking one thing and working on it every day. For people like Hince and Mosshart, the time comes by devoting all the energy stores to refusing to pick one thing, and somehow managing to be good at everything.

15 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

The Kills have been touring on their 2011 release, Blood Pressures, for the last three years. In fact, touring might be an understatement. The Kills have crisscrossed the globe, blasting their gritty and relentless version of the blues, much to the enjoyment of audiences everywhere. In between, Mosshart managed to find time to join the Jack White-fronted supergroup The Dead Weather, and Hince saw the opening of his first photo exhibition, Echo Home, at New York’s Morrison Hotel Gallery. In April, Mosshart debuted her own art at ArtNowNY, a group show devoted to female artists—an experience that, by her own admission, exceeded any expectations she had for the public reception of her art beyond album covers and tour swag.

features national scene

Each of the four studio albums release by The Kills since 2003 have garnered strong, positive responses from both audiences and critics alike. The group’s early sound is distinctly lo-fi, with notable punk/ garage influences. Over the years, that sound has shifted into a more refined—but equally gritty— energetic and immersive realm. Blood Pressures is the duo’s most exploratory and diverse album to-date. The chunky drum beats and heavily distorted guitar are reminiscent of work done by the White Stripes, but The Kills manage to dispel any lasting comparisons with the ability to dive deep into the muck with a song like “Satellite,” and then rise up into the ether with the ever-tender “The Last Goodbye.”

The duo is currently working on recording its fifth studio album, although no release date has been set. And, perhaps, that is fitting. For two people with seemingly inexhaustible artistic outputs, pinning them under arbitrary constraints feels unnecessary. True to that nature, Mosshart pegs the completion of the album somewhere between “forever” and “the next three weeks.” Fortunately for us, despite the coast-to-coast tours, the benefit concerts and art exhibitions, Mosshart managed to dig out some extra minutes to talk with ELEVEN about the demands of the being the road, the difficulty in saying no to the endless line-up of great projects, and how she manages to balance her different artistic pursuits on a daily basis. Photo by Dana Yavin

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 16

features national scene ELEVEN: You guys have done quite a bit of touring and worked with quite a few groups over the last couple years. So now that you’re in the studio again, are you finding you have a bunch of new influences and sounds you’re trying to explore? Alison Mosshart: I don’t know, I feel like I can’t really control what I write. I just write stuff, and I don’t know where it comes from. So it’s hard for me to say. The last couple of years have been pretty jolty. We’ve been doing kind of a little bit of everything, and we’ve been writing this whole time. Writing stuff and getting rid of it—I swear we have about a million songs, so whatever this record ends up being, I have no idea. . . I really have no idea. The best thing we can do is just keep writing and recording, and you start to get a picture of what the record is supposed to be, and it sort of leads you down that path. We’ve been doing that, but this is really the first time we’re trying to finish songs—really finish them. So it’s complicated. This could take forever, or it could be done next week. I have no idea. 11: Your last album came out in 2011, so it’s been awhile, and it sounds like you guys have been doing quite a few things in the interim.

11: About your artwork, it looks like you’ve put quite a bit of time into that, how does it feel getting some of your more personal stuff out there? AM: Yeah, I have been painting forever, and drawing forever, and taking photos and doing all that stuff. I went to art school in college, and all of that stuff kind of came from skateboarding—you know art, music, and skateboarding kind of blew up, like this huge explosion in my head right at that perfect age where all those things led to all of these things. I never thought about showing my work. I never thought about selling it. Not that I’m opposed to it, I just have always done it and then just put it in a stack. I don’t know what I ever thought I was going to do with it all. Until now, every time we’ve needed a record cover or a poster or a t-shirt, something like that, I’ll try to do it at the time because I really love that part of it. It’s what I always have done. It’s nice, though, to be asked to be part of the group show [Ed. Note: ArtNowNY, devoted to female artists]. To sell everything was really mindboggling to me. I couldn’t believe it. It was totally nuts. So now I’m going to do more! You know, I’m just, like, "Well damn, this is really cool." I’ve got so much work. I literally have hundreds and hundreds of paintings, and I paint almost every single day. I quite like the idea of work that I’ve done hanging up in peoples’ houses and people seeing them—I don’t need to have them all. What am I going to do with them?

"We’ve played Portland a lot of times, been there a lot, and we have friends in Portland. I really love it. It always feels like it’s time to go back."

AM: Well, we toured for close to two years on that last record, and we’re kind of still touring on that record. I think the problem is you keep getting asked to go play really cool things that you want to play, and I think—you know, we’re a live band; we really love playing, and I think that’s the best way we can represent ourselves is by actually showing up and playing a gig. It can be a lot of stopping and starting, because it’s a really different frame of mind doing live shows and being on tour and then coming into the studio and really locking yourself in a room and not leaving the building for a month. It’s a little bit of adjustment time to do that, so it’s been a lot of back and forth where you’re not quite in it, you’re not quite in it, then, oh shit, you gotta go.

11: I see you guys are going to be doing a show with Queens of the Stone Age, in Los Angeles, and I’m wondering how that came about? AM: Yeah, we’ve played with them a bunch of times; we’ve known them for a really long time. We’ve all been friends for a really long time, so this Halloween show—they just asked if we wanted to play a Halloween show with them. I don’t know how you say no to something like that. It’s like the best Halloween ever. So that was that, and we booked a tour around it because we had to get there.

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11: It sounds like you have a pretty prolific creative output between touring, writing songs, and then your artwork now on top of that. Do you use one as an outlet for the other, where if you’re feeling up against a wall with a song, you turn to painting, or vice versa? AM: Yes, that’s how I’ve always been. If I get stuck, I’ll get to something else. I’ll get stuck on that. I’ll get sick of painting, then I’ll play music for a day or two, and then I’ll get sick of that, and I’ll just get stuck or whatever and I’ll go back. A lot of days, I do both—literally an hour of this and an hour of that, and I can’t stop. That’s not to say that it’s all good. It’s just part of the process. But then I also just write in my book; I just write, write, write for like three hours, and then play music for two, and then I paint until I get sleepy. It does create a lot of stuff. But it’s good, you know? It’s my job, and it’s a good thing that I love doing it so much. 11: Do you have any influences? What is your favorite medium to work in?

features national scene AM: I don’t even know what my influences. . . I’m influenced by everything. I see something that I like and I like it. I don’t have a favorite artist because I love so many. I love seeing everything. When we’re on tour, anywhere we can possibly get to an art gallery, I’m there. I try to see as much stuff as I can. I love it. But my preferred medium, I don’t know. It’s funny because I’ve been painting out of a suitcase for so long that it’s small stuff, small paper, stuff that will fit in a suitcase. And I usually go with paint because I have no time to wait for oil to dry; it’s not happening. Whatever I find is good—whatever I can find. It’s getting more interesting in my studio now because I’ve got space and I can start trying different things, which has been really fun this year because I’ve had some time. It’s gotten a little bit more wild. I’ll go to the art store and find something I don’t know how to use. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it’s going to do, and I try to make something with it. That’s one of my favorite things to do—find something else. So I don’t know. My preferred medium is whatever I can get my hands on! 11: And Jamie has been doing some photography, it looks like? AM: Forever. Since the birth of The Kills and before, he’s been taking photos of everything, and filming everything, and painting. We both do all of this stuff all the time. He’s really into photography, and he’s got about a bazillion cameras, as many cameras as he’s got guitars. He’s always buying them. He literally has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of negatives from the past fifteen, sixteen years, and probably even before that. The case is absolutely enormous in our house. It’s nuts. Even going and pulling out just a couple of contact sheets—it’s a life’s worth of work; it’s so insane. He did that Morrison Hotel art show, which was great. He printed off this picture he took of me and his dog for charity. It was such a nice picture, and he printed it off and gave it to them, and they were like, “Shit, your pictures are great. We want to see more.” And within a month he had a show. It was so fantastic. 11: Did that play into your decision to play the Open Road Aperture benefit concert?

MISSIS SIPPI STUDIOS S

C A L E N D A R O C T O B E R 2 1. WED

15. WED

GLASS ANIMALS

BADBADNOTGOOD

ROME FORTUNE

1939 ENSEMBLE

2. THU

16. THU

OUGHT

EX HEX / SPEEDY ORTIZ

BIG HAUNT / U SCO

BLESST CHEST

3. FRI

17. FRI

MERCHANDISE

LOWER / ARCTIC FLOWERS

CASH’D OUT

4. SAT

18. SAT

BISHOP ALLEN

THE RECORD COMPANY

TRUMMORS / THE LOWER 48

SINKANE

6. MON

19. SUN

MIC CAPES / MAZE KOROMA

WATER TOWER / WINDUS

VINNIE DEWAYNE

7. TUE

PDX PAST PRESENT FUTURE: OUR ARCHITECTURAL NARRATIVE

8. WED

FUJIYA & MIYAGI

MAGIC TOUCH / STRATEGY

HELADO NEGRO / GRAPEFRUIT

SEAN ROWE 20. MON

CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN 21. TUE

FEDERICO AUBELE 22. WED

ÁSGEIR

9. THU

LOW ROAR

GENDERS

GRANDPARENTS / THE DOMESTICS

23. THU

10. FRI

O’DEATH

GREYLAG / JOEL MAGID

24. FRI

11. SAT (EARLY SHOW)

MATTEAH BAIM

STONE JACK JONES

THE WHIGS

PERFUME GENIUS

THE MYSTERY BOX SHOW 11. SAT (LATE SHOW)

MRS. feat DJ BEYONDA 12. SUN (EARLY SHOW)

HOBEY FORD’S GOLDEN ROD PUPPETS ORPHEUM CIRCUS

AM: Well, we said yes to that because we love Robert Frank so much. So, anything that has to do with him, we’re there, absolutely. He’s been a huge inspiration, and I think it’ll be great.

12. SUN (LATE SHOW)

WILDCAT! WILDCAT!

WHITE HINTERLAND / SUPERHIGHWAY

25. SAT

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO PETER BUCK 26. SUN

EMA

MAGIC MOUTH

27. MON

LATE NIGHT ACTION WITH ALEX FALCONE 29. WED

VACATIONER BRICK + MORTAR

13. MON

TOO MANY ZOOZ

NEKA & KAHLO / DJ HWY 7 & THE GHOST TRAIN

11: How did you get looped into that? There’s a pretty diverse line-up of performers. How did your guys’ name come up, do you know?

14. TUE

AM: I don’t know. The people who were organizing it just got in touch with us and we said yes. We met them—they actually came to Jamie’s photography show, and they were all excited. So I don’t know why they thought of us. Maybe because we’re always doing stuff like that? I don’t ask too many questions. If it’s for Robert Frank, I’ll be there.

SHOWS you’ll remember, presented in an independently run, best-sounding music listening environment with great staff (mostly musicians), drinks, burgers, and PATIO.

30. THU

JEFF AUSTIN

LEFT COAST COUNTRY

31. FRI

PINS

WOLF EYES

EXPRESSWAY YO YO DIETING

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www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 18

features national scene 11: So you guys are going to be playing the Wonder Ballroom in Portland. Do you guys get through Portland fairly often? AM: Well, we haven’t been there in a while. We try, when a record comes out, at least to play there twice. It’s far, but I love Portland. We’ve played Portland a lot of times, been there a lot, and we have friends in Portland. I really love it. It always feels like it’s time to go back. 11: There are quite a few different sounds and bands that come through Portland. You can’t really nail down the city for a specific style of music. You guys have that really gritty, bluesy sound that has a good edge to it. Do you guys meet up with other artists from the Northwest that you’ve enjoyed playing with? AM: Oh, yeah, of course. We always have a great time in Portland, and there’s a lot of great bands there. I’m really shit with names—Jamie would be a better person to ask—but we’ve made a lot of really good friends there, and we always have such a good time when we’re there. And I quite like having the day off in Portland because I don’t want to leave. I always want just more time, and I love it. It’s a really musical city, it really is. It always has felt that way. I remember our very first tour going through there, and it was one of the best places we played. People kind of welcomed us with open arms even though we didn’t have a record out and no one had ever heard of us, which was cool. 11: You’re recording the new album in Michigan this time around? I thought I had read you were recording in London? AM: We have never said we were recording in London, so I’m not sure where that came from. I never know where we’re going to record until it’s over. We could end up anywhere. We could do two songs here, three songs there—the music’s going to tell us where we need to go. I mean, right now, we’re pretty much writing and recording everything, and we’ll see how far we get in the next three weeks. And then I have no idea where we’re going to go. 11: What’s your collaborative process like? AM: Well, it’s kind of odd because we don’t really have a way of doing anything. Jamie writes songs, and I write songs. I’m quite good at writing half songs and not being able to finish them, and Jamie’s great at finishing things. So, I’ll write like a hundred half songs, and he’ll write like five really damn good ones. But I don’t know, you know? Sometimes I write lyrics to his songs, and sometimes he’ll change lyrics to mine. He’ll pick a musical part from something I’ve written and put it in one of his songs, or he gives me a drumbeat he’s been working on, and I’ll write a song to that. It’s kind of all over the shop, everywhere. And then there are songs where solely one person did all that, and the other person came in and sang on it. There’s not really

19 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

features national scene a "way” we do anything. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we did actually have a way of doing things. But we don’t, so it’s always different and it can take a long time, I think, because of that. You’re just searching for something—you’re searching and searching and searching, and it takes a while. 11: How does that compare to when you’re playing in a larger group, like the Dead Weather, when you have a bunch of different people all working together trying to craft a song? Do you prefer working with one other person, or is it too different to even compare? AM: It’s so different. So, so different. There’s no way of describing how Jamie and I work. It’s odd. It’s so odd. I don’t know anyone who works like us because we can’t even define it—how it is we work. The Dead Weather, you know, it’s very traditional. It’s four people playing in a room at the same time, jamming, writing everything at once. Really rarely would someone come in with a part. Somebody would just start, and then everyone else would follow, and then suddenly you’re following someone else, and then two hours later you have a song that’s recorded and done, lyrics and everything. And also you’re talking about. . . those guys are fucking pros. They’re such great musicians. There’s not too much confusion or wandering around. That band was really about capturing a moment, and you can do that when you have a live drummer. You can just go with it. You can slow down. You can speed up. You can change.

There are a lot of things you can do. I mean, with The Kills, we’re programming drums. So if you want to change something, then you have to wait a day to make that change. It’s going to take a long time to figure out the next thing that you can try to play to, so you try to play to that, and that doesn’t work. So, literally, a drumbeat to a song can take, like, two weeks to nail down and get it totally right. And then you have to put a vocal on it, and it’s just not quite working. So you have to change it again. Or a guitar, and it’s not quite working, so you have to change that, too. It’s labor-intensive. It can be lonely! It’s a different way of working, whereas the Dead Weather is people jamming and coming up with shit off the top of their heads, and that being the thing. That’s it. Leave it. Of course, I’m sure, the songs could be a hundred times better if we approached it a different way. At least they’d be different—a different thing, a different energy. That band’s about the energy and the moment and that being it, and you just live with that—that’s what it is. And then you write another song. »

Catch The Kills live this month October 28 @ Wonder Ballroom

FRIDAY 10.3: SARCASTIC DHARMA SOCIETY|WHITNEY BALLEN - 9PM/$5 SATURDAY 10.4: TOWERING TREES|WILD AND SCENIC - 9PM/$5 SUNDAY 10.5: NEURO SOUND PRESENTS: NATURAL REMEDY|OUTTA LIMITS| INHERIT EARTH - 9PM/$5 THURSDAY 10.9: NEURO SOUND PRESENTS - 9PM/$5 TUESDAY 10.14: DAYDREAM MACHINE|SOFT SHADOWS| THE FOREIGN RESORT - 9PM/$5 THURSDAY 10.16: COLORING ELECTRIC LIKE|VIBRAGUN|HALF BROTHER - 9PM/$5 FRIDAY 10.17: ROSELIT BONE|COUNTRY THRASH|THE CRY - 9PM/$5 SATURDAY 10.18: KOOL STUFF KATIE|COUNT KELLAM - 9PM/$5 SUNDAY 10.19: BABY KETTEN KARAOKE - 9PM/FREE THURSDAY 10.23: THE SUN PILOTS - 9PM/$5 SATURDAY 10.25: JACKSON BOONE|LIFE LEONE|BROKEN ARROWS - 9PM/$5 FRIDAY 10.31: CHANTERELLES - 9PM/FREE SUNDAYS: THE EARLY EARLY COMEDY OPEN MIC - 4PM FREE MONDAYS: BUNKER SESSIONS OPEN MIC - 8PM/FREE MONDAYS: EYE CANDY VJS - 9PM/FREE TUESDAYS: LATE TUNES WITH KPSU DJʼS - 9PM/FREE

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 20

film

WATCH ME NOW

FILM AND TELEVISION

SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FLESH: MONSTERS, MOVIES, OURSELVES

n 1919 Freud asked the question: “What is horror?” And what a looming question it was. Freud coined the term “the uncanny” to describe the arousal of dread, and within that term is where we now place the supernatural, the eerie or unequivocal terror. Fear coils in your stomach and clutches at your heart. It’s an unpleasant emotion we usually do our best to avoid. Yet, we are drawn to horror, mesmerized even. From the creation of our earliest myths to the 21st-century, a vehicle for our collective fears has been ‘The Monster.’ Thus, from the first days of cinema, filmmakers have put monsters to celluloid. But what is the monster? It can be the insidious familiar: Hannibal Lector’s charming psychopath, the introverted but nefarious Norman Bates, or the psychosexual edifice of Carrie. It could be the remarkable and bizarre, materializations of the things that haunt our deepest imagination—ghosts, Dracula, The Thing, or Frankenstein’s Monster. One could argue that the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are a type of monster, or Jaws’s titular shark— filmic manifestations of the anxiety unleashed by the disorienting power of nature, and how despite our best efforts to tame it, nature will always triumph. There is also the antipathy that comes with the unchecked mind. In Robert Wiene’s 1920 masterwork The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, horror comes from chicanery and deception, madmen and murder, where no one can quite be believed, nor can they believe one another. What we can say with certainty is that monsters and the films they inhabit are vehicles for expressing our deepest societal fears. One of the most powerful forms of metaphor they signify relates to humanity’s inherent xenophobia. The impulse to feel terror at an unfamiliar culture permeates our history, and filmmakers have responded through the monster narrative. Race and racialized imagery are common fodder in the monster film genre. Expressions of fear and anxiety about race are made manifest in films from King Kong to Candyman. Provocative

21 | ELEVEN PORTLAND | www.elevenpdx.com

explorations of race have been fertile material for many directors. Monster films can offer a place for racial minority participation on screen, but can be problematic in execution and in depictions of stereotypes—both literally and figuratively. The monster in the 1970 film Cry of the Banshee comes in the form of sexual otherness. Set in 17th-century Ireland, the plot involves a corrupt magistrate (played wonderfully wicked by Vincent Price) who attempts to destroy a local coven of Druidic witches. Witches have long been exemplars of the patriarchal culture’s suspicion of women and sexuality, primarily women who assert sexual agency or autonomy in any form. Eastern film traditions are rife with witches as well. For example, in one particular scene in Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 retelling of Macbeth set in feudal Japan, Throne of Blood, the warrior Washizu comes upon a witch in the woods, whose portents are met with derision. The Bollywood film Kaalo is based on an Indian folktale about a witch who returns from the dead to wreak havoc on a local village. In the film, the titular witch was killed in the 18th century for purportedly sacrificing young girls to maintain her immortality—a kind of Indian Elisabeth Báthory. Bodily discord and the ever-present anxiety of the breakdown of one’s body is elucidated in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, where the monster is infirmity. The microscopic monsters of disease in films like Outbreak or Contagion display the inherent fear when faced with the unstoppable march of pathogens beyond our understanding. In recent years, the most potent exploration of our deep fears of uncontrollable contagions is the incredible proliferation and popularity of zombies in film and television. Since George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, zombies have slowly begun to overtake (pun not intended, I swear) prototypical monsters like vampires—sorry, Twilight. Even though they are usually representative of the fear of illness, this fascination—even preoccupation—with zombies could be read as a combination of all the aforementioned nodes of fear. All that our societies repress and oppress have created the monster to serve a psychological function. These metaphorical embodiments are conceptual as well as cinematographic, serving a therapeutic function as well as expressing psychological conditions. Whether it is the situational plausibility of the horror or the total outlandishness and otherness of the monster, the Hollywood monster itself will never lose its hold audiences that need an outlet for the fear they can’t face within themselves. » - Rachael Haigh Illustration by Drew Bardana

film Instant Queue Review Witches Edition I MARRIED A WITCH

(RENE CLAIR, 1942)

One of the first and best witches.

VIRGIN WITCH

(RAY AUSTIN, 1972)

Sleazy, 70s Satanic sensation.

SUSPIRIA

(DARIO ARGENTO, 1977)

Before there was Black Swan.

THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK

(GEORGE MILLER, 1987)

Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon...are witches...there is literally nothing better.

ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK

(JAMES SIGNORELLI, 1988)

She's not a witch but she is fabulous.

KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE

(HAYAO MIYAZAKI, 1989)

The cutest witch.

HOCUS POCUS

(KENNY ORTEGA, 1993)

The best and most beloved.

THE CRAFT (ANDREW FLEMING, 1996) These high school witches are real bitches.

SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH

(CREATED BY NELL SCOVELL, 1996-2003)

For the late 90s witch in you.

EVERY HARRY POTTER MOVIE

(2001-2011)

Hermione Granger represent!

www.elevenpdx.com | ELEVEN PORTLAND | 22

community literary arts

Photo by Mercy McNab

shotgun in some endless trip across America, listening to his wide-eyed tales of madness, jealous rage, and sex. Luke is very modest about his work. And therapeutic as it may have been for him to write it, he’s also a master of craft and language. He was recently back home in Portland, for his book release at Powell’s on Hawthorne, accompanied by his pup Jewely (who he had rescued from a kill shelter) only to return to his students at the University of Texas at Tyler the very next day. I was fortunate to spend some time with him at Loretta Jean’s, where we ate apple pie and talked about his book and his life. ELEVEN: So first off, do you consider this an autobiographical novel?

LITERARY ARTS Portland writer Luke B. Goebel

is debut novel, Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours starts out with our narrator on a hospital bed, being treated for pancreatitis and suffering from a shattered relationship: “I can take the body’s betrayal at first, I think, but I think of Catherine and I’m done for, nearly.” He also has recently lost his brother, but it is not talked about much early on, other than as a point of reference to the story being told as “before” or “after” Carl. Luke has already received high praise for the book, being compared to the likes of Kerouac and Kesey, and winning the Ronald Sukenick Prize for Innovative Fiction. When asked if his his book was written in a stream of consciousness like On the Road, He is quick to object. “It’s conscious, not streaming. . . it’s choosing.” And he’s right about that. He writes with a fractured consciousness that’s perfect for today’s ADD audience. At first glance, you may think Fourteen Stories is just the musings of someone who has seen the other side of sanity and is working his way back through a maze of heartbreak, loss, and longing— “A feeling ride,” as he calls it. But there is much more to it. The reader experiences the tightrope the narrator is balancing on. Fourteen Stories is a wonderful mess of a book, alive in all its manic glory. The frenetic stories are only heightened by the cadence in which he spills his guts across the page. The narrator speaks to you parenthetically for a while, with a funny story, then goes back to the desert and peyote with Indians. The voice is so present that you feel like you’re riding

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Luke B. Goebel: I would say no. To me, an autobiographical novel is very close to memoir, a thinly veiled memoir. I don’t think my book is that. Are there things that are true? Sure. But I think the difference is that I shattered the back story a long time ago. If you have to take the whole story of your life, whole hog, and just veil it, then maybe that’s an autobiographical novel. What I did was shatter my identity, my attachment to this place, my people, the idea that this is my story, and it’s too precious to abandon. I just smashed the fuckin thing and took pieces. And then said, "What if I take this piece and that piece and make this part up?" And then there’s just messing around, making up the story of America, playing with context, playing with ideas, creating a dialogue between myself and the text, myself and the reader—to keep them thrilled. I wanted to give them something honest and true and also bigger than just myself. I don’t want to just drag someone by the hair through my life. I want to give them their life. It’s just universal. So is it autobiographical? No. Is it true? Yes. Is it factual? No. Partly? Yes. 11: Do you feel you have more responsibility to yourself or the reader to tell your story? LBG: All of the above—to myself, to the love that I’m describing, the person in my life that I’m writing about, Catherine, to everyone in the hospital, to everyone who’s ever been in a hospital, to everyone who will die in a hospital. . . you know, all of it. It’s not like I have this big burden of responsibility or I have to save the

community literary arts world, it’s just. . . what is this thing that I am feeling? What am I experiencing? Why does a hospital feel so true? Because we can’t get out of it. We’re born and die in these things. So it’s like, how does that speak to us? 11: These are all very human stories, and seem very timeless. Like when your character is held up at gunpoint in Puerto Rico and the thief is crying. The desperation in it feels like it could happen at any time. LBG: Yes! Before guns it was something else. First of all, that did happen. The guy really did hold me up, and he really cried, and he really gave me a cigarette, and I made him light it. I thought about hitting him, but I only had twenty bucks on me, so what’s the point? I gave him the twenty and he gave me this great fucking story, and this memory, and his heart, him just weeping, all drugged out. Just a beautiful guy. He wanted to tell me how friendly the island is, in Spanish, and he was really apologetic about not welcoming me properly [laughing]. At least it was a 45 caliber, which is what I like to shoot out in the desert out here in central Oregon. If he held me up with a 22 I would have been kind of insulted. I’m sorry. . . what was the question? 11: Just for you to talk about the human aspect of these stories. It doesn’t seem like you were out to write the "Great American Novel" here. They just seem like stories of connection. LBG: Everyone wants to ask you these questions. Everyone is now an academic. I’m an academic, i.e. I teach, which is absurd for my life story. You write the thing, and then to be able to speak about it in this really intellectual and academic way—we have all these great theories, and it’s wonderful. But in truth and what I really wanted to say is that I just don’t really know. You don’t ask an actor how they do it. It’s just acting. We all talk a lot about what we do as writers, but basically I have a lot of attention to sound, to sentence, and from studying with Gordon Lish, I pay a lot of attention to recursion. I understand the game of really grown-up peek-a-boo. You start something, then abandon it for a minute and then bring it back. That keeps a sense of the familiar. There’s a sense of order. You can do that with craft, sound, themes, and stories. So I understand what I’m doing and what I’m playing with. But what it really comes down to is that I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t writing this kind of novel or that kind of novel. It was just these accidents that turned into stories. Like

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buying an RV and driving across the country and weaving them together after I already had the book deal. I wanted to keep going. I still wanted to talk about my brother. I still want to talk about my life. I wanted to see how these things connect. I was playing the game, but had something urgent—I wasn’t done talking. 11: Where do you think modern fiction is going? It doesn’t seem like people are reading as much as they used to. LBG: I read an article that the millennial kids are reading more than any other generation for decades, so people are reading. I don’t know if anything is as good as it used to be. A few things are. . . I think that it’s a tough time to write. There’s not much of a sense of where do we go next. I think we finally hit the point of, "What do we have left to believe in?" I think we’re starting to realize that the world is going to be a series of conflicts and problems without answer, as it has been for a long time. But we at least had some optimism. There’s not a sense of where do we go next as a people. I was trying to get as expansive with my book as possible. . . how much can we bring through the eye of this needle? How much heart can we reinvest in the system? Because people are in need of something inspiring. That’s not commerce only, or capital only. I think anyone writing with with vulnerability or a willingness to question themselves, and to get honest, is someone we need right now. Someone who can get true to their condition, who has a life force, who has passion. » - Scott McHale

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8 Compound 9 Orox Leather Co. 10 C Burger 11 Darcelle XV

community neighborhood of the month

CHINATOWN

NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE MONTH N W

NW EVERETT ST E

NW DAVIS ST

Location photos by Mercy McNab

2. PIANO SHOWDOWN

Barrel Room - 105 NW 3rd Ave

BEST OF CHINATOWN

3. CHINATOWN CHOW DOWN

House of Louie - 331 NW Davis St

NW 1ST AVE

1. EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR GAME

NW COUCH ST

Ground Kontrol - 511 NW Couch St

NW 2ND AVE

NW 3RD AVE

NW 4TH AVE

NW 5TH AVE

NW 6TH AVE

NW BROADWAY

4. LATE NIGHT DANCIN' Tube - 18 NW 3rd Ave

5. ECLECTIC AMPS

Case of Bass - 19 NW 5th Ave

6. URBAN THREADS & ART

Upper Playground - 23 NW 5th Ave

7. VINTAGE EATS

Old Town Pizza - 226 NW Davis St

8. FRESH FOOT GEAR & MORE Compound - 107 NW 5th Ave

9. PORTLAND TANS

Orox Leather Company - 450 NW Couch St

10. WINDOW OF MEAT C Burger - 28 NW 4th Ave

11. FABULOUS DRAGULOUS Darcelle XV Showplace - 208 NW 3rd Ave

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community visual arts

Photo by Mercy McNab

was still in France and I would try to buy the furniture, and if the antique seller found out what I planned on doing with the furniture, they often wouldn't sell it to me because they said it was just a crime to do what I was planning [to the antiques]. When I told them that I was going to paint it pink or green they said, "No, I wont sell it to you." They might give me a few phone numbers of some knock-off retailers. The process to customize the furniture was a bit too long and quite expensive. I did not see myself working for an agency doing logos all day after I graduated from art school because I knew that after two months I would be totally bored and going crazy. So this is when I said, "Ok you know how to work images so why don't you find out how to use them in a different way." I really wanted to do art, to make art. 11: Did you experience any bias from your family when you told them you wanted to go to art school? Did they try to talk you out of it and into a more "practical" career? I'm just curious if this type of thing happens in France like it does in America when young adults tell their families they want to go to art school.

VISUAL ARTS Portland artist Yannick Hamon

rench-born artist Yannick Hamon is basically a stencil wizard. With exhibits in San Francisco, L.A., New York, and Miami selling out like hotcakes, designers and art collectors are turning to Yannick for an updated kick to what we think of as a contemporary art. Street art influences and a French eye for beauty and sensuality are combined with the meticulous detail of a true old school classically trained calligraphy artist. Really, it's no mystery why Yannick is capturing new fans young and old. ELEVEN: Will you describe your process? Yannick Hamon: Whenever I see a photo that I really like, I look at it and say, "What can I do with this?" This is how everything really starts. The next step is the stencil. Nothing is screen printed. A lot of people might see my work and think that it's a screen print, but it's not. Everything is really handmade and hand cut. The stencils take maybe about three weeks, working every day. I have nothing against screen prints or anything, but you know this is all handmade. This is not graffiti art. Just because I use spray paint doesn't make me a graffiti artist. This is pop art contemporain. I started with furnitureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;antique french furniture. When I

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YH: No, I think my parents were maybe a bit scared, but they would have been more scared if I went to a worse school. My mom has always been and still is very supportive. When I was twenty I said to my parents that I wanted to go to graphics school. It was a bit expensive, but they knew that it was what I really wanted to do so they said ok. It wasn't in a true school or classroom. It was in this guy's atticâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Bernard Arin at the Scriptorium de Toulouse. He was one of the guys that really changed calligraphy as we know it. He currently holds the title of best calligrapher in France. I studied typography and calligraphy. Yes, there is also the stereotype about artists in France too. Like my aunt and uncle think I'm just this hippie who just doesn't make a living. No, I wake up every morning and paint or work on the stencils from eight a.m. to sometimes ten p.m. This is my sole income. I do not have another job. This is my job. I had an interesting conversation with a well known artist in France a few years ago, and he told me that there are lots of times when you say to yourself, "Okay, I'm going to give up," or "This isn't going to work." He said, "At one point, if you keep doing what you're doing, it's going to happen." 11: Can you explain your experience being an artist in Portland? YH: I think Portland is a very creative city, but I think for my type of art it's really, really difficult. I think it's really much more challenging here than when I show in San Francisco, L.A., New York, or even Miami. For example, in San Francisco the pieces sold out basically the opening night. And here there have been

community visual arts three exhibitions and only one piece sold. So in this way you can really see the difference. I think Portland is really missing a true—I don't know how to explain it—something beyond what already exists here. In four years I have not found a gallery that is showing current works from around the world. If this gallery exists I have not found it.

are in their twenties. I sold a painting to a man here in his fifties, and when he took it home his wife was not really that happy. Well, he actually bought four or five paintings. 11: How do you stay motivated to create new work?

YH: It is what I really Iove to do. Even if what I'm doing right now—cutting two thousand itty bitty squares— 11: Who is your ideal is really boring. Like today audience? I spent five hours to cut ten Collaboration with designer Aaron R. Thomas. Painting on acrylic chairs lines. But, you know, it's what YH: I think my art can appeal to everybody. I had a 67-yearI love to do. I don't really see myself doing something different. I old woman who loves all my paintings, even the ones with the really love the art industry. I've always had this passion. girls kissing each other. It depends on how people are thinking. It depends if people are open to having nudity in their house—if they 11: What are your favorite things right now? are open to that or if they are not. I know lots of people who really love my painting, but because there is nudity in it, it's impossible YH: Right now? At this time right now? I have to say fried for them to hang it. I have people who have bought my paintings foods. And, well, sneakers. We don't really have fried foods in that are in their sixties and people who bought my paintings that France, so I really like eating it.

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community visual arts 11: Is there an artist who inspires you? YH: Yes, a French artist. I think now he is in his eighties. His name is Jacques Villegle. He is doing collage, just collage. I think if you saw his work you can see how he's influenced me. I am not doing collage like him, but you can really see how he has influenced my style. He started in the 1950's, and if this guy was in his thirties right now he would be a rock star. He's amazing. 11: Can you tell us about your collaboration with the designer Aaron R. Thomas? YH: Well, I wanted to paint on a hard acrylic surface. I contacted some companies in the acrylic industry and they said it was impossible. I was like, "Alright, they are working in this industry so I think they know what they are talking about." So, I left it alone, sad. Then I found this guy through Facebook who makes acrylic furniture. So I think I started to speak with him through Facebook maybe four or five years ago. Last June when I was in L.A. I said, "Ok, so I really have to meet him." I went and knocked on his door. At first we wanted to do something together, but just for fun. So when I sat down with him he looked at my work and was like, "Ok this is totally different from what you're showing." He agreed to work with me. After we did the first collaboration (with my painting on his acrylic chair), he said, "Okay, I think we are going to be working together for a very long time." So a union was born.

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At one point we were wondering what to do on the side of the chairs we were working on. We said, "Okay, let's think about that later." He went to take a shower, and when he came back I said, "I have an idea for the side of the chair!" He said, "Me too!" I was like, "Okay, so you first." When he said his idea it was my idea too. It was really easy to work with him. We spoke this morning and we are talking about showing in galleries. His acrylic furniture with my painting. Also we are planning to show very big acrylic pieces that will hang on the wall, which is something that nobody is really doing right now. Everything [about Aaron's process] is really hand made. Even the acrylic skateboards are all molded by hand. The next phase of the process will be painting on the large acrylic sheets like I wanted to do in the first place. Now Im going back to what I first wanted to do, but with a twist. 11: Are there any Portland artists you would like to recognize? YH: Jon Stommel and Travis Czekalski. I like their work a lot. Âť - Veronica Greene

Please enjoy Yannick's piece "Dakota" (spray paint, acrylic pen, resin, collage on canvas, 2013) decorating our inside back cover this month. Find more from Yannick at www.yannickhamonart.com