Kelly Blair Bauman Monday, Nov. 16-- Local Cut

Kelly Blair Bauman Monday, Nov. 16

November 11th, 2009 [6:01AM] Posted by: Matthew Singer | 0 COMMENTS

Kelly Blair Bauman sees Portland burning, and he’s got the midlife-crisis folk to soundtrack the destruction.

[DOOM POP] “Across the bridge to this forsaken town/ Like some Gomorrah in the night,” sings Kelly Blair Bauman on “I Saw Stars,” a gorgeous standout from his debut solo record, Gomorrah. That’s as specific as he gets in identifying the modern stand-in for the doomed biblical city of the album’s title. He claims it’s “any town where there’s a lot of excess.” How about an example? “Portland’s a good one,” says the Northwest transplant.

Don’t get upset. As he says, it could be anywhere: “There seems to be this ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’ current in society that’s growing stronger. The sense of personal responsibility for being nice to people, it feels like all that is eroding.”

At 37, Bauman describes the songs on Gomorrah as “midlife-crisis folk music.” But in a way, it’s a return—in temperament, at least—to the music he played as a teenager. Growing up in Redding, Calif., Bauman mostly listened to the poppy, jangly college rock of the 1980s. Going to shows in nearby Chico and San Francisco drew him toward the freakier end of the pop spectrum, and he spent his 20s skronking out in weirdo psych-punk bands. He established himself writing noisy, off-kilter songs in the Northern California scene. Eventually, though, Bauman tired of creating cacophony.

Gomorrah is instead a record of composed pastoral elegance, with a greater focus on lyricism, more varied instrumentation, and a bit of that guitar jangle he learned in his youth. But Bauman insists he hasn’t completely abandoned his more outre influences—he’s just turned the volume down. “To do Swervedriver as a country band—that would be magic,” he says.

As many moments of beauty as there are on Gomorrah, however, it’s certainly crisis music, midlife or otherwise: The album is littered with references to death, darkness, “apologetic ghosts” and “hearts turned black as night.” It’s a reaction, Bauman says, to looking at the world as a man approaching 40 and seeing a place where people are increasingly receding into themselves. “During the Bush administration, it very much felt like that was happening. It got claustrophobic, and it felt like everything was falling apart.”

He pauses for a moment. “I’ll bet it’s always been like that,” he says. “I’m just getting grumpy and old enough to bitch about it.”

SEE IT: Kelly Blair Bauman plays Monday, Nov. 16, at Valentine’s with the Old Light and Hungry Ghost. 9 pm. Free. 21+.

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