Junkface Bigalia

(Self-Released)

[HIDDEN GEMS] The last song on local power-pop quartet Junkface’s new full-length, Bigalila, is a tender, sweet, piano-’n’-acoustic guitar ballad. Singer-songwriter Randy Bemrose quietly intones over the charming track, his warbly, barely-there voice rising over the sparse backing instrumentation. Even though “Untitled” is buried as a hidden track that only begins after four minutes of silence, it’s still quite a shock to anyone who’s heard the local garage-pop quartet’s last release, Kill Them With Love, or saw Junkface go through its damaged party-punk phase.

In 2006, a folky Elliott Smith-inspired song was the last thing you’d have expected from Junkface. But the band has gone through many permutations over the years, the one constant being Bemrose’s consistently great and—this being the key—fun songwriting.

Bigalila finds the band in its full-on power-pop mode, with tons of hooks, squiggly keyboards and lots of warm power chords. “Long Emergency” bounces on a shifting bass line and Rob Welch’s sugary synths, almost like a lost gem from Return of the Rentals. Both “Asterisk Young Artists Project” and “All Your Advice” have the ringing guitars and linear structure that have made the Helio Sequence such a big deal, but the production here is not overtly clean—Junkface still sounds like a basement band, just one that freshens up and puts on a nice suit before hitting the town for the night (indeed, Bemrose has occasionally been known to suit-and-tie it at shows). This new Junkface lineup probably won’t destroy your basement, but it’s good to see that the group can still surprise us. Pleasantly, too.

Hornet Leg Ribbon of Fear

(K Records)

[BLUES EXPLOSION] The sounds coming out of Olympia’s flagship label K Records have almost always had a ramshackle, charming quality to them. From Beat Happening’s late-’80s run to the Microphones’ layered musings on nature, the label has often shown us that great music doesn’t always have to sprout from flashy musicianship or crisp production values.

Hornet Leg—the project of Portland songwriter Chris Sutton—hasn’t always had a sound one would describe as being very “K.” The group has tackled many genres over the course of six years: slinky electro, harsh noise, melancholy pop. But its latest disc, Ribbon of Fear, throws everything out the window in favor of a minimal punk-blues groove, and it results in one of the most refreshing and listenable Northwest releases of the year.

On Ribbon, Sutton is joined by Bob Desaulniers on bass and Nucular Aminals’ Robert Comitz on drums, and the trio plays the kind of spunky blues that Jon Spencer once made famous but hasn’t touched in years. The new record alternates between all-out stompers like “Snake Oil” and “Disco Junkie” and more adventurous undertakings like “My Baby,” where Sutton croons over an all-percussion backdrop packed with tapped hi-hats and woodblocks.

In a time when too many albums are destroyed by a reliance on overdubs, Ribbon of Fear shows that sometimes the simplest approach is the one that really kills—something Hornet Leg’s new label has known for years.

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Alan Singley & Pants Machine Feelin’ Citrus

(Bladen County Records)

[WOWEE ZOWEE] Alan Singley is a uniter, not a divider. More than maybe any musician in Portland, Singley’s giddy, enthusiastic compositions and upbeat vibe seep into his songs—so much so, in fact, that even the sadder numbers still feel bright and happy. Feelin’ Citrus, Singley’s third full-length and first since 2006, is his best set yet, filled with ditties about bikes, babes and rice pudding that are just too damn catchy to resist.

Feelin’ Citrus is Singley’s first foray into lush orchestration, and the loungey vibe—courtesy of both a horn and string section—comes off like Pavement recording a Burt Bacharach tribute. Singley has always flirted with the line between schmaltz and goofiness, but Feelin’ Citrus is so bouncy and radiant that even the cheesier lyrics are grin-inducing. On the bopping “Le Rain,” he sings of a “Life that’s sweet/ But oh so full of cavities” with so much earnestness that you have to go with it, and “Medley of Revival,” with its call-and-response vocals between Singley and guitarist Leb Borgerson, has summer anthem written all over it. We’ll see how it holds up once the clouds come out, but for now Feelin’ Citrus sure sounds sweet. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

Leviethan Everything Is Fine

(Self Released)

[DREAMY SINGER-SONGWRITER] In 2009, it’s pretty tough to carve out a real musical niche. But even in this age of musical oversaturation, Leviethan (Portland songwriter Levi Ethan Cecil) has found a unique calling with his surreal pop. His music defies comparisons, unless the listener wants to do some math: Shudder to Think, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and Rush all seem to be in the mix. But hearing Cecil’s breathy, androgynous voice float over the pronounced funk bass lines of “Notions Rearranged” or the flamenco guitar flourishes of “That Face,” it seems like one could add forever without getting the formula quite right.

It’s clear that for Cecil—perhaps best known for his work with Portland psych-pop outfit Heroes and Villains—Leviethan is a labor of love. It’s loved, too—Cecil asked friends and fans to “invest” in the record earlier this year by pre-ordering discs to cover production and printing costs. The investors should be happy with their returns: Everything Is Fine soldiers down some of the same stylistic roads as 2007’s Monuments in Memory of Nothing So Far, but Cecil now seems more comfortable with himself and the studio setting.

Most bands record an entire album without approaching the range of the Beatles-esque “The Story of Half,” a bouncy orchestral jaunt with a wispy chorus behind Cecil’s questioning, psychedelic lyrics: “Do you ever suspect that you lost half your mind/ But you adapt sometimes?” While not every lyric Cecil delivers is as insightful, the music is typically gorgeous. Closer “So Long” is an operatic track that feels like the closing credits of a Technicolor adventure film, and when it ends, it’s more than a little hard to shake oneself out of Leviethan’s dream and back into reality. CASEY JARMAN.

SEE IT: Alan Singley plays Thursday, Aug. 27, at Mississippi Studios, with Blunt Mechanic. 8 pm. $10. 21+. Leviethan plays Friday, Aug. 28, at the Woods, with Run On Sentence and Blue Cranes. 9 pm. $7. 21+.

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[FUZZY AMERICANA] When Blitzen Trapper released its Sub Pop debut, Furr, last year, the title track turned a lot of new ears toward the band. There’s a reason for that: “Furr” finds frontman Eric Earley channeling his inner Dylan to deliver a twisted coming-of-age narrative with a killer hook. The song wasn’t a departure for Blitzen Trapper so much as a clear-eyed distillation of the group’s folkiest works. Taken as a whole, the disc—true to BT’s track record—was a curious gumbo of influences both electric and acoustic.

“Black River Killer,” another Furr standout that now headlines the group’s new EP, is another crisp, acoustic story song. It’s a murder ballad that reminds one of Jim Croce and—it must be said—Everlast’s “What It’s Like,” with the pristinely produced BT cut prominently featuring what sounds like a G-funk synth whistle to go along with Earley’s near-spoken vocal delivery.

Having found success with these creepy twists on throwback Southern folk-rock, one wonders whether Blitzen Trapper will soon abandon its shred-heavy Mr. Hyde side entirely. And while the Black River Killer EP can’t exactly be submitted as evidence—it’s a collection of rarities from years past—it is the chillest and twangiest collection of songs BT has released to date. The distorted harmonica blasts on “Silver Moon” don’t cover the fact it’s a sweet, tightly constructed soft-rock anthem, and the stripped-down “Black Rock” is strikingly meditative.

Though “Big Black Bird” (yeah, there’s a “black” theme going here) ends the seven-song disc with some riffage, the tune is far more indebted to Skynard and Buffalo Springfield than Sonic Youth.

If this EP is a quick digression for BT, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one. And if it’s meant as a transition toward a kinder, gentler forthcoming full-length? Hell, bring it on! At this point I’m pretty sure Blitzen Trapper knows best.

GET IT: Black River Killer comes out Tuesday, Aug. 25.

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Commotion Self-Titled

(Self Released)

[GROOVY JAZZ] Pianist Ben Darwish is best known as one of Portland’s brightest straight-ahead jazz players, but his band Commotion’s debut album is hardly jazz as we know it. But, as Miles would say, “so what?” As with Davis’ once-panned, now-praised On the Corner, Commotion’s steady beats, danceable grooves, wide-ranging musical wanderings and irrepressible sense of fun make it an ideal summer album.

Darwish’s vintage electronic keyboards make some numbers (all originals composed by Darwish, bassist Sam Howard and guitarist Chris Mosley) reminiscent of ’70s fusion excursions, minus the meandering self-indulgence. Commotion breezes through guitar rock (“Hip Joint”) to the Herbie Hancock-style “Intencion Sexual” to the up-tempo “Fiasco,” which sounds like a lost ’70s jazz-rock classic. The strutting horns (trumpeter Greg Garrett, saxman John Nastos, trombonist Daniel Lamb) and punchy percussion (drummer Russ Kleiner and local world-music maven Chaz Hastings on tabla and congas) provide rich textures that pump up the deep grooves like a 1990s home-run hitter on steroids.

Whatever the category, Commotion rocks the headphones, but this loose-limbed summer music really needs to be experienced somewhere you can animate your nether regions without knocking over the furniture or frightening the house pets. BRETT CAMPBELL.

SubArachnoid Space Eight Bells

(Crucial Blast)

[MONOLITHIC FREAKOUT] Melynda Jackson has never been one to stay put. As the leader of lysergic-acid-rock outfit SubArachnoid Space, Jackson inherited the band’s sound after co-founder Mason Jones left in 2003, remolding an already heavy cauldron full of dense, sprawling noise rock into something slightly more song-oriented. One of her first steps was to move from San Francisco to Portland, something that’s readily apparent on Eight Bells, the band’s new full-length and first with a lineup of local players.

Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, Eight Bells never manages to get too comfortable, which is exactly what one wants in a record like this. Mixing one towering, monolithic, mindfuck of a noise jam (the 13-minute “Akathesia”) with shorter, punchier expulsions like “Bird Signs,” it’s an album of guitar tones both primal and ethereal—one minute Jackson’s beating you senseless with a riff, the next she’s kissing you in an attempt to make nice.

Still, the record just sounds dark, like those terribly gray fall days when it looks like the sun might never peek out through the clouds. Even though it’s a heavy, mostly instrumental jam (aside from a few bloodcurdling screams and Jackson’s wordless yawn), all five of the record’s tracks feel like actual songs. And that’s the difference between Eight Bells and SubArachnoid Space’s past: Guitar freakouts are nice, but they work a whole lot better when you don’t know what’s coming next. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

SEE IT: Commotion performs Friday, Aug. 14, at Someday Lounge. 10 pm. $8. 21+. SubArachnoid Space plays Friday, Aug. 14, at Berbati’s Pan. 9 pm. $7. 21+.

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Nurses Apple’s Acre

(Dead Oceans)

[WHIMSICAL POP] Last summer, Nurses vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Chapman began tinkering around with GarageBand in the attic of the dilapidated, crummy Northeast Portland house he was living in with bandmate and best friend John Bowers. The duo had no experience with the entry-level recording program, but it proved to be the ideal medium for the band’s whimsical, twinkling pop songs.

So if Apple’s Acre has a lo-fi bedroom pop feel to it, it’s because it was actually recorded in a bedroom.

The disc’s undeniable highlights—the whistling, stuck-in-your-head-for-days “Caterpillar Playground,” the triumphant and echoing “Man at Arms” and the galloping singalong “Lita”—rank as some of the best pop songs of the year. Apple’s Acre is that rare record that absolutely benefits from the production limitations: Some moments crack and pop, or sound like they were captured from the next room, but it never distracts from the catchiness of the band’s arrangements.

Besides a reliance on Rhodes electric piano and shifting, gurgling electronics, Apple’s Acre is a revelation wrapped in ramshackle percussion. Chapman and Bowers—the album was mostly finished before Nurses recruited drummer James Mitchell—rarely utilize a full drum kit, preferring tambourine and tapped hi-hats. On “Caterpillar Playground,” the percussion of choice is mouth noises that would make Timbaland proud. The song’s simple, assured structure allows for Chapman’s voice—which is at times both yelpy and soulful, like a vagabond who has seen one too many sleepless nights—to carry the tune. Those relentless simple melodies, combined with Nurses’ use of vocal harmony, have inspired quite a few comparisons to the Beach Boys. And though Apple’s Acre does bear traces of Brian Wilson’s prime material, it’s even more steeped in glorious weirdness.

Before finding Portland, Nurses roamed the country, looking for the right place to settle down. When Chapman sings the refrain “Won’t make this house a home again” on “Lita,” we’re reminded that Portland may not hold Nurses forever. But we’re definitely glad they made a bedroom in Northeast their studio for a few months.

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(Tender Loving Empire)

[EXPERIMENTAL POP] When the Pixies’ now-legendary second album, Surfer Rosa, appeared in 1988, it helped to usher in a new era in the fledgling, underdeveloped genre of indie rock. The band’s approach to songwriting was simple—hit ’em with a quiet verse; a loud, rapturous chorus; and another quiet verse—but deadly and highly influential. Kurt Cobain once admitted to ripping off the Pixies’ song structures, and ever since then so has just about every band playing guitars and drums and keyboards. But few have succeeded quite as well as local avant-pop quartet Church.

The band’s debut full-length, Song Force Crystal—coming exactly one year after its still-remarkable Gold EP—shows a marked change in the band’s approach. Where Church’s older material often opted for wide, cavernous space in place dynamics, Song Force Crystal takes the group’s experimental tendencies and ratchets them up a notch. Many songs still drift like a bee in search of just the right flower, but almost every track on the album is filled with noise—clattering, floor tom-heavy percussion, skittering fret work, sighing clarinet (on both the instrumental “Quilty’s Guilty” and the gorgeous final minute of closer “Golden Girls”) and keyboardist Christof Hendrickson’s various analog synthesizers.

Many of the songs begin quietly, filled with pretty, twinkly synths, before exploding in a cascade of distortion and deep, fat analog bass. Opener “Graveyard” begins innocently enough, with pitter-patter drums, piano and waves of ambient noise. It’s a slow burner, a song that doesn’t crest until halfway through its six-minute run time—when guitarist-vocalist Brandon Laws’ guitar turns from a sparkler into a Roman candle, blasting slabs of molten sound over the bare structure. “Crab Magic” is both achingly pretty and unexpectedly heavy, deftly transitioning from Laws’ repeated refrain of “I won’t leave you outside” into a furious bridge and then back again.

The only real downside to this tactic is that, in the end, the record lacks a punchy, tactful single, something like Gold’s bouncy “Happiness”—a song that could propel Church to the place it deserves: a spot alongside Menomena and Nurses among Portland’s best weirdo-pop bands. Still, more than any local release this year, Song Force Crystal sounds like it was made for these times—even if its structures are easy to reproduce.

SEE IT: Church releases Song Force Crystal at Rontoms on Sunday, Aug. 2. 9 pm. Free. 21+.

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Satan’s Pilgrims Psychsploitation

(Self Released)

[SURFADELIC] One would expect a 10-year hiatus to take a band off its game a little. But Satan’s Pilgrims—renowned surf-rockers from Portland’s past whose last album appeared on shelves in 1999—are picking up right where they left off. In fact, like many of the groups that inspired the Pilgrims, the quartet has taken its most logical next step: It’s gone psychedelic.

The band had dabbled in psychedelia before its hiatus. Creature Feature, released in 1998 and ostensibly a riff on monster-movie soundtracks, featured some bad-trip hippie shakes; the B-sides on 2004’s Best Of collection had a couple of jammy jams that never quite fit on an SP full-length. But Satan’s Pilgrims have never devoted an entire release to anything quite this druggy. Moments of Psychsploitation—the electric sitar plucks of “Rainy Day Green Stop Sign” and the ghostly voices on “Tracers (Of Love)”—sound like original instrumentals by groups like the Turtles and the Mamas and the Papas. “Psychle Pswami” is brash enough to be a late-era Monks tune.

But part of the Pilgrims’ appeal has always lay in their accessibility: Instrumental surf-rock is a family affair, and Psychsploitation is no exception. An entire generation of hip Portland parents should be happy to have these extra-groovy Pilgrims back in action. CASEY JARMAN.

Trevor Giuliani Subcontrario (In Stereo)

(Dovecote)

[NEW SLANG] It’s clear from listening to Trevor Giuliani’s Subcontrario (In Stereo) that the singer-songwriter is in a place of flux. Giuliani moved from New York City to Portland last year, and on the record’s penultimate song, “Janessa,” that move is on his mind. “Why do we live here in New York?/ And not in Ory-Gone,” he sings, his voice floating over a bed of ethereal acoustic guitar that wouldn’t be out of place on a Coldplay album. “But no, that’s not how they pronounce it out there/ But also you sometimes are wrong, babe.”

Giuliani’s lush pop, which at times recalls Swedish crooner Jens Lekman, various trad Britpop acts, and (hang with me here) Duncan Sheik, resembles very little else in P-town. In a music community known for its indie rock, Trevor Giuliani might find it alarming that almost no one is making pop as meticulously as he is.

Every facet of Giuliani’s songs—from the Beatles-esque strings that color the relationship quandary “Settled Bounds” to the picked guitar and glockenspiel-laced “Van Singing”—is well thought out. Giuliani builds his recordings like a carpenter, carefully layering both acoustic and electric instruments to create moments that, even if a little saccharine at times, stick with you the next day. Subcontrario could use a rocker or two to shake the mid-tempo pacing, but as a lovingly detailed pop record about moving to a new city, it makes a pretty big splash. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

SEE IT: Satan’s Pilgrims play Saturday, July 25, at Doug Fir with the Ghastly Ones. 10 pm. $10. 21+. Trevor Giuliani plays Berbati’s Pan Tuesday, July 28, with Parachute. 8:30 pm. $10. 21+.

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Yacht See Mystery Lights

(DFA)

[MYSTERY BEATS] YACHT has always played with contrasts. Jona Bechtolt was accessible long before his music was, smiling and chatting with fans before, after and sometimes during shows. In the early days he gave funny names to fucked-up beats and complemented what seemed like willfully impenetrable recorded material with theatrical and often hilarious live performances.

On new release See Mystery Lights, Bechtolt and new co-conspirator Claire Evans keep the juxtapositions coming. The duo has narrowed its focus with such laser-specificity that it only takes eight songs (plus a couple of remixes) to define its current disparity: The beats are more accessible than ever, even as YACHT’s message moves further out of the mainstream.

The resulting album opens with two meditations on religion. “Ring the Bell” asks, “Will we go to heaven or will we go to hell?” before explaining tentatively over an electropical hook, “It’s my understanding that neither are real.” Bookending the disc’s opening existential crisis is “The Afterlife,” which complicates YACHT’s first answer: “It may come as a surprise, but you are not alone,” Evans says with an elegant, upper-crust drawl. We’re left a little confused, but nodding emphatically to the beats.

YACHT spends as much time talking as singing on See Mystery Lights, largely trading the glitch-soul of 2007’s I Believe In You. Your Magic is Real. for a wobbly and mathematical Talking Heads sensibility. “It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want” reminds of David Byrne rattling off locales on the Heads’ “Cities,” where YACHT’s “Psychic City” runs on pulsing nerd-funk that nearly outdoes its spiritual ancestor, “Once in a Lifetime.” While “Psychic City” is the album’s standout track (and first single), it serves a deeper purpose: It’ll pull a whole new group of fans into YACHT’s wonderful, if mysterious, world. CASEY JARMAN.

Hide and Go Hustle Self-Titled

(Self-Released)

[THE ELECTRONIC CELLO PROJECT] If the opening strain of Hide and Go Hustle’s debut self-titled EP sounds a bit familiar, it’s because the instrumental combo—led by guitarist and beatsmith Mike Moore and cellist Catherine Odell (the Portland Cello Project, Horse Feathers)—tread nearly the same stylistic ground as another beats-and-classical music instrumental act from Portland: the much-lauded Talkdemonic.

It’s hard to shake that familiarity on first listen. But this is no tribute act: While many of Talkdemonic’s pieces are short, quick-hitting two-minute bursts, HGH crafts songs that—largely without the emotional touch of a human voice—contain the narrative build and break of a swelling sea.

Album highlight “Monster” doesn’t need words to express an overwhelming sense of dread—it’s littered with sampled sounds, from an ominous opening scream to the crash of breaking glass. All the while Odell’s cello rides a skittering, harsh beat that’s held in check only by the closing martial drums (played live by Benjamin Jaspers of Alan Singley and Pants Machine) and plucks of a high-pitched guitar that flutter like a firefly at a lamppost.

A few of the EP’s tracks are based around these clunking, pre-Y2K beats, and they’re the songs that hit hardest. “Riot in the Ranks” clangs with a rudimentary mechanical groove that contrasts with the mournful cello and Moore’s impassioned guitar bursts. “If Chins Could Kill” will blip-bleep its way onto the playlists of anyone who still remembers the Postal Service; it’s the poppiest thing here, and the one track that’s really screaming for a vocal melody. The rest of the EP is just fine without one. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

SEE IT: YACHT releases See Mystery Lights on Thursday, July 16, at City Hall with Y La Bamba and Point Juncture, WA. 5:30 pm. Free. All ages. Hide and Go Hustle releases its self-titled EP on Thursday, July 16, at Holocene with Paper/Upper/Cuts and Breakfast Mountain. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

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The Tree People Human Voices

(Guerssen)

[FLUTE FOXES] Within the first 30 seconds of the Tree People’s reissued sophomore album, Human Voices, the psych-folk trio tests an aughties listener’s threshold for both the weird and the tender: “In the morning when you’re still sleeping/ When you have those crazy nightmares/ I swear I’m here within the birdsong/ Human voices joining along in our loving song.” These trippy lines are beautifully delivered—spooky three-part harmonies paired with unpredictable chord and tempo changes rattling out from a finger-picked guitar. But when the flute swoops in like an excitable raven, cynicism and years of anti-Renaissance Fair conditioning creep into one’s opinion.

About half of Human Voices is instrumental, with Stephen Cohen’s voice and acoustic guitar canoodling with Jeff Stier’s expertly played flutes and organic percussion. And while the wordless compositions—anchored by Stephen’s brother Jeremy on bass—are coolly melodic, it’s a side of the recently rebuilt trio that is going to be tough for modern audiences to contextualize. Oregon was a gentler place in 1984, it would seem. Still, the Tree People’s lyrically driven songs are both accessible and modern. The haunting “Grandfather” evokes Lou Reed more than Donovan; disc highlight “Thomas” is a Simon and Garfunkel-esque story song, and the earnest “That’s Entertainment” is both relatable and thrillingly told.

Picking up a Human Voices isn’t quite like discovering Nick Drake or John Fahey—musical spirits who seem more natural now than they ever did when they were in their prime songwriting years. Instead, one has to meet Treepeople halfway between now and then. But Human Voices, like the trio’s fascinating 1979 self-titled debut, provides another excellent reason to do so.

The Minus 5 Killingsworth

(Yep Roc)

[SINGER-SONGWRITER] Scott McCaughey is easy to spot—slurping canned beers at Portland shows, smiling behind his trademark black shades—but tough to keep up with. McCaughey founded influential pop outfit Young Fresh Fellows in 1982 before working with Mudhoney, touring with R.E.M. and becoming Robyn Hitchcock’s regular bassist. He’s everywhere.

The Minus 5 is McCaughey’s most mercurial “group,” serving alternately as a solo project (My Chartreuse Opinion), an experiment in collaboration (Down With Wilco) and, as on Killingsworth, an excuse for McCaughey to work with his favorite musicians. The disc, decorated with snapshots of McCaughey’s favorite Portland haunts and musicians, features a good chunk of Portland’s folk-rock scene alongside regular collaborator Peter Buck, Mudhoney’s Steve Turner and the Posies’ Ken Stringfellow.

While star power has the potential to sink a record, McCaughey’s writing is wide enough to accommodate the range of styles. Portland folk singer Little Sue plays his Emmylou on “Dark Hand of Contagion,” Tucker Jackson creates a lonely slide guitar howl on “Big Beat Up Moon,” and McCaughey hands vocal duties on the charming “Scott Walker’s Fault” over to Colin Meloy. What really shines here, even more than usual, is McCaughey’s writing. “I Would Rather Sacrifice You” is a devilishly good aughties take on the Louvin Brothers’ “The Christian Life,” and by the time the gorgeous album-closer “Tonight You’re Buying Me a Drink, Bub” rolls around, McCaughey is on a huge lyrical roll: “You can try not to look me in the eye/ Say I’m not a Triple Nickel kinda guy/ But I’m up on the jukebox with a gun/ So tonight you’re buying me a drink, bub.”

SEE IT: The Tree People play Performance Works NorthWest Saturday, July 11. $10. All ages. The Minus 5 plays Doug Fir Friday, July 10. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.

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On a local level, though, I have a hard time arguing against the inclusion of Deelay Ceelay’s “No Vex” on any summer playlist. Coming off like Ratatat with less guitar posturing and thudding beats, “No Vex” is an airy and infectious slice of electro pop, riding the dual drumming of Chris Lael Larson and Delaney Kelly and some of the brightest synths you’ve ever heard. Opening with a catchy guitar figure (one that stopped a WW staffer more than once to ask if the disc was skipping), the song gradually builds but never feels forced; when the loops and gurgles and keys come in, it’s still that ringing guitar that carries you through the whole thing, holding your hand and leading you to the end. So maybe nobody’s dropped the definitive, ubiquitous summer jam yet. In the meantime, you’ll probably see me listening to “No Vex” while I’m firing up the grill in my yard.

Download audio file (NoVex.mp3)

Links:
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Photo courtesy of Deelay Ceelay

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