so this past weekend i went to oregon for a pair of concerts (and just to go to oregon, because, really, why not?). i saw sun kil moon on thursday in portland and m. ward on friday in eugene. saturday was spent driving back home.
LD and i left thursday morning, and the drive to portland was pretty straightforward. i've driven the 82/84 route enough times this year that at this point it's a matter of course (except for that one time when i missed my turn, drove 2 hours west instead of south, and had to shortcut through an indian reservation to get to lincoln city on time, but we won't talk about that). but it was still really beautiful, being that weird part of spring/summer in this part of the country when everything is completely grown-in but it's still not ridiculously hot yet.
i had decided ahead of time that it just made more sense to get a room in eugene for two days instead of trying to drive to eugene the morning after the sun kil moon show, so we rolled into portland around 4pm, and ended up spending about four hours just wandering around town. having never spent time in portland before, i have to say that i was really impressed. it really is a unique city, even compared to eugene or seattle or SF. i really, really liked what i saw, and though i can also now better understand the usual criticisms that are levelled at portland, i personally loved the hell out of it. it was such a nice day and the city was SO AMAZINGLY WALKABLE that i was sort of disappointed when we had to filter into the wonder ballroom for the show. the ballroom itself was literally in the middle of a well-treed residential area, which is awesome considering they draw pretty well-known acts (RA has played there before, and they had posters for a lot of up-and-coming indie acts on the walls). there was a cafe under the ballroom itself, and while it was one of those seattle-chic type indie-rock cafes (lots of mirrors, candles, and people in dark, tight clothes and angry makeup), we got a shitload of food for a few dollars and went upstairs totally stuffed and not feeling ripped off.
the venue itself was not the best i've ever been at. it was pretty much all floor GA, and over-21 and under-21 were separated by a huge divider that took up way too much room on the floor (ever heard of a rope, security? no need to build the berlin wall indoors). the crowd really only filled half the floor at any given time (i actually spent most of the second part of the show sitting on the floor in the back and i could still clearly see the stage). the entire place was wood floors and thin walls, and it didn't help that all the sound was provided by two HUGE wall speakers...the resulting sound was very tinny and piercing, which doesn't help especially when you're already listening to sun kil moon. some of the more guitar-laden tunes were actually physically painful to listen to. other people in the audience were also cringing.
my streak of good openers continued on this trip. the last two shows i've seen were wilco (who had fleet foxes as their opener) and mason jennings (who had zach gill as his opener), and sun kil moon had matt costa as their opener. having already heard one of his albums, and having found it to be a little too firmly in the vein of jack johnson's music, i wasn't really expecting anything special. i was very surprised, then, to realize on the way back to the car that i very much enjoyed costa's performance more than sun kil moon's. he played a few acoustic songs, and also played a few songs on a beautiful blue hollowbody gibson, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist. it was hard to catch a lot of the lyrics (and what i did catch were fairly straightforward; not bad, just not mind-blowing). the songs themselves, though, were structurally really interesting. everytime he began a song that seemed that it would simply lead into basic pop/folk territory, there would be a really interesting bridge, or transition, or riff that popped up. he also ran the gamut from jazz, to blues, to folk, to pop, and he mixed all of the genres together even within songs. it was just really different from what i expected. on top of that, he was a truly unique and engaging performer. he communicated with the audience (not required, but nice) and he also spent a bit of time during a few songs improvising and doing similar things that you just wouldn't expect a solo performer to do much of. i can't really explain what it was that was so positive about his performance for me, but i'm definitely going to check out more of his music now.
sun kil moon wasn't bad; quite the opposite. their albums (which i love) present a band that is very technically proficient and has one very particular sound. so that's what i expected, and that's what i got. the band's playing was really tight, and mark kozelek's voice sounded great. the drummer also sung some pretty incredible harmonies. the thing is, every song they played sounded exactly the same. like i said, this is already sort of the case with the albums, but the nuances of the production bring out at least small, different details in each song. live, with only four instruments to work with, the band essentially could have been playing the same song for the entire 2 hours and it would have sounded much the same. mark and the other guitarist did very little in terms of using pedals or effects to switch things up, and although the drummer was fantastic, he played largely the same few beats and fills throughout. once again, the band was incredibly talented. but i got the impression that they knew they were playing for a room full of 300 or so people and they were content to just go through the motions as a result. that in and of itself was not a huge deal, but having seen a lot of bands that are still trying to "make it" play their hearts out in front of even smaller crowds, i guess this performance just left a bad taste in my mouth in the sense that i felt we were being given an orchestrated product rather than a performance. i don't know if that makes sense. it wasn't bad, but i remember saying something to LD when we left along the lines of "if i'd have known they were just going to play by-the-book versions of all of their songs with inferior mixing, i would have just stayed home and listened to the albums". their technical abilities were impressive, but i don't see why you'd bother to see a band live just for that. on the other hand, they did close with "tonight the sky" and the encore was pretty great (they finally switched up instruments and played a mostly acoustic modest mouse cover).
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