Formed: 2007 in San Francisco

Members: Christopher Owens and Chet “JR” White.

Latest release: Girls’ debut, Album, came out this fall on True Panther records.

Why you care: Girls’ back story is almost too good to be true: Frontman and songwriter Christopher Owens grew up as a member of the Children of God cult in Florida (no, really) and spent much of his childhood as a vagabond, living for stints in Europe and Puerto Rico. It’s rumored his mother was among women followers used by the Children of God to bait potential converts with sex, a method of evangelism called “flirty fishing.” Around the age of 16, he escaped to the states and eventually settled in San Francisco, first joining the band Holy Shit with Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck before forming Girls. On Album, Owens spins heartbreaking tales of drugs, girls, and on the incredibly catchy breakthrough “Lust for Life,” a wish list of life’s simple pleasures: “I wish I had a suntan/ I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine.” Album is also just a pure joy to listen to, 12 songs of buoyant pop filtered through a hazy lens of old 45s and hungover afternoons.

Sounds like: Brian Wilson and Roy Orbison going on a crazy weekend bender—popping pills, writing love songs, and jamming with Big Star.

For fans of: Jonathan Richman; California pop; anyone who just wants to shake a leg or two.

SEE IT: Girls play Wednesday, Nov. 18, at Doug Fir, with Dominant Legs. 9 pm. $10. 21+.

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MarchFourth Marching Band Rise Up

(Self- Released)

[BRASS ’N’ BALLS] Some great live bands just can’t seem to capture their in-person energy on disc. “You have to see ’em live,” we tell friends, apologetically, when the CD doesn’t bring it. I was afraid that would happen with MarchFourth, whose joyous performances owe so much to the visual—and visceral—impact of so many big-horn toters and percussionists having so much fun, marching into the audience and throwing down. That ambience is notoriously hard to capture on a recording, as even masters like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band have discovered.

Of course, no CD could quite encode all of March’s costumed energy—much less its flag-twirlers, stilt-walkers, unicycles, fire eaters, puppets and other accomplices—in little digital bytes.

But Rise Up comes a lot closer than any of us had any right to expect. Sounding tighter than ever, the two- or three-dozen member collective has miraculously managed to channel its raucous sweat, swing and swagger for home and headphone. Newbies can enjoy this party-ready record for its own sake instead of just as a pale souvenir of a full color concert.

The disk presents almost the full range of M4’s diverse sounds—Mexican brass band (“Contada Ridiculata”), odd-meter Balkan party gypsies (“Simplon Cocek”), throwback Latin big-band jazz (“Dynomite”), classic funk (“Freestyle for Miles,” which owes as much to James Brown as to its namesake), New Orleans second line (“Ninth Ward Calling”), gospel rave up (“Gospel”) and unclassifiable hybrids. If Herb Alpert were still running the Tijuana Brass, “Happiness” would be the perfect cover.

Some proceeds from Rise Up go to Sweet Home New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that helps the damaged Crescent City’s music and cultural institutions recover from Katrina’s helluva Bush-whacking job. Fresh as Rise Up sounds, there’s no substitute for the full MarchFourth live experience—lucky for us, the band plays this week. BRETT CAMPBELL.

Curious Hands Bangin’ Like A Fox

(Self-Released)

[SHORT STORY] Brevity can go a long way in rock music. Of the 19 tracks on local spiky-punk quartet Curious Hands’ second full-length, Bangin’ Like a Fox, only one is longer than three minutes. Actually, hell, the whole thing breezes by in just over half an hour. I have three songs in my iTunes library longer than that.

The fun in listening to Bangin’ comes from its short run time. Instead of tacking on needless bridges or an extra chorus, Curious Hands’ two songwriters—guitarist Jack Tuftee and bassist Tyler Riggs—distill a serious dose of punk rock sneer into sharp pop nuggets that, if anything, almost resemble a garage-rock haiku. It’s tempting (and easy) to compare the band’s songs to Guided by Voices mid-’90s material, where Bob Pollard seemed terrified of letting anything get past the first verse. Those confines led to some incredible pop moments, though; 14 years on, and “Game of Pricks” is still the most perfect 93 seconds ever put to a crappy-sounding four-track.

In my mind, a more accurate comparison is to prolific Vermont project the Capstan Shafts, if leader Dean Wells were into video games instead of lengthy song titles. “Tuck Away Boys” and “Bleeding Heart” both bop along on jangly arrangements and choogly guitar playing, and “I Told You So,” with its stop-and-start beat and infectious hook, would fit well on any mixtape. Though it’s filled with a bit of clutter and silly moments (do they really need to sing about starfish?), Bangin’ proves that sometimes it kills to keep it simple. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

SEE IT: MarchFourth plays Wonder Ballroom on Thursday, Nov. 19. 6:30 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. All ages. Curious Hands play Langano Lounge on Saturday, Nov. 21. 9 pm. Free. 21+.

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by Michael Mannheimer and Casey Jarman

This week, as if by some strange cosmic alignment, two large-looming ghosts from Oregon music history return to Portland for encore performances. And it turns out, Everclear and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies have more in common than their disparate music would suggest: Both flew impossibly high, both bands’ frontmen are mythicized and reviled and, as they plummeted back down to earth, both acts were unceremoniously butchered­ (or outright ignored) by ex-fans and critics. Here’s a bittersweet look back on two groups that ruled Oregon (and the world) in the late ’90s.

EVERCLEAR

Formed: 1992 in Portland.
Genre: Alternative rock or “melodic grunge.”
Fans would say: Portland would never be the mecca of indie rock if not for Everclear, which wasn’t just the biggest band in town for a six-year stretch from 1995 to 2001—it was one of the biggest alt-rock bands in the country. Singer Art Alexakis helped put Portland on the map at a time when our neighbors up north dominated the rock charts.
Haters would say: Alexakis is a smarmy prick, a guy who knew how to play three chords and was lucky enough to jump on the bandwagon when major labels were looking high and low for the next Nirvana. If he still lived in that “big house in the West Hills,” we would egg the shit out of that place.
Highest-selling record: 1997’s So Much For the Afterglow, with over 2 million copies sold.
Career high: Though the trio’s best-selling single is the maudlin 2000 ballad “Wonderful,” nothing comes close to 1995’s Sparkle and Fade. Drugs, sex and teenage catharsis.
Career low: “Volvo-Driving Soccer Mom” in 2003. Or the October-released In a Different Light, a covers record featuring Alexakis’ new hired-guns version of Everclear covering…Everclear.
Crowning artistic achievement: Those simple opening chords to “Santa Monica” are what every teenage boy in Oregon first learned to play on guitar in the ’90s.
Jumped the shark when… With the terrible Everclear cover of “Brown Eyed Girl”? Or maybe when former Godsmack and Fuel drummer Tommy Stewart joined the band’s third-generation lineup in 2008?
Best comeback attempt: At least 2008’s one-off single “Jesus Was a Democrat” had some backbone behind it. (MM)

CHERRY POPPIN’ DADDIES

Formed: 1988 in Eugene.
Genre: Funk, ska, swing, rock…everything but the kitchen sink.
Fans would say: The Daddies are a Northwest institution that broke the boundaries of genre and built a faithful fan base through relentless regional touring. Frontman Steve Perry is a dynamic performer and underrated songwriter. And most of Perry’s innuendo-driven wordplay is subtle enough that you can bring your kids to the show!
Haters would say: The Daddies began as an annoying white-boy funk-rock band and, upon seeing the opportunity, milked the swing revival for all it was worth. Now that the ska and swing fads have run their courses, the Daddies have returned to their rightful obscurity. And Steve Perry takes himself far too seriously.
Highest selling record: Zoot Suit Riot (1997), which went platinum in 1998 and double platinum in 2000.
Career high: Playing Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve party (alongside the Backstreet Boys and Chicago) to ring in 1999.
Career low: “Swingin’ With Tiger Woods (The Big Swing),” a halfhearted, failed cash grab from the Daddies’ 2000 release, Soul Caddy. When you go topical with the lyrics (see Everclear’s career low at left), things almost inevitably take a turn for the worse.
Crowning artistic achievement: The victorious and emotionally resonant “Hi and Lo,” a longtime Daddies live favorite finally committed to tape for last year’s Susquehanna and also featured on new collection Skaboy JFK.
Jumped the shark when… The first time they played the Playboy Mansion.
Failed comeback attempt: Last year’s Susquehanna, a balanced, moody release that incorporates Latin flourishes into the Daddies’ already eclectic sound. (CJ)

SEE IT: Everclear plays a benefit at the Crystal Ballroom to support St. Francis Dining Hall on Thursday, Nov. 19. 8 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. All ages. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies play Wonder Ballroom on Friday, Nov. 20. 8 pm. $16.50 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.

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IMAGE: OK PONY

[RAINY DAY] If the tone of Portland noise-folk trio Meth Teeth’s debut full-length, Everything Went Wrong, seems a tad pessimistic, there are good reasons for that. For starters, the album’s recording process nearly destroyed the band. It took three full tries to get it done, after the first two were interrupted by everything from members quitting to malfunctioning equipment. If the third attempt had failed, the group was ready to just scrap the whole thing.

“We were so fucking mad at these songs,” says 26-year-old singer-guitarist Mattey Hubele, his round, bearded face framed by a black hoodie.

Clearly, a lot of shit indeed went wrong for the band. But life wasn’t always this difficult. In fact, in its two years together, Meth Teeth has gone pretty smoothly. It wrote and recorded what would become its first 7-inch two days after forming in 2007. A month later, the band piled into a Dodge Stratus and left on tour (the band claims to have logged a jaw-dropping 10,000 miles), miraculously playing nearly every scheduled show. And that’s not to mention that Hubele and drummer Kyle Raquipiso both managed to make clean breaks from their hometown in Tri-Cities, Wash., an area known for nuclear waste and—as the band name suggests—tweakers.

But then, last winter came. “I was living in a concrete basement with no heat,” says Hubele. “So that helped piss me off really bad.” Everything Went Wrong is a product of that period. The frustration shows: Although there are underpinnings of melody and ramshackle Americana, it’s almost completely swallowed by analog fuzz; Hubele’s languid, disconnected vocals are buried by heaps of distortion; songs have titles like “World is Going to End Soon” and “Failures Selected by God.” Hubele says it’s an album about “being bummed in the winter here and hanging out with crazy alcoholic girls who ruin your life.” Considering when it was written, that’s understandable. It also didn’t help that at the time, Hubele was hanging out with a bunch of goths who “would talk about how being bummed is a way of life while taking huge bong rips and watching Tupac videos.”

He laughs at the image, and it becomes apparent that maybe he isn’t the giant buzzkill he appears to be. Hubele shrugs. “I think things are better now.”

SEE IT: Meth Teeth plays Doug Fir on Sunday, Nov. 22, with the Dutchess and the Duke and Greg Ashley. 9 pm. $10. 21+.

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Dirtnap Records’ Ken Cheppaikode at his SE Portland record store, Green Noise. IMAGE: Tom Martinez

Call it an example of the American Punk Rock Dream: A decade ago, Ken Cheppaikode was living in an apartment below a vet clinic in Seattle, cleaning cat shit out of litter boxes in exchange for free rent and nurturing a vague idea of starting his own record label. Today, he is entering his 10th year as the head of Portland’s Dirtnap Records. For an imprint of its modest size, it is about as respected as one can get. Its catalog is filled with underground classics. A licensing deal is getting its bands’ music into video games, snowboard videos and at least one Sunkist commercial. Cheppaikode has three interns. He ain’t rich, but for a guy who grew up on welfare, didn’t go to college and isn’t entirely sure he graduated from high school (long story), it’s not bad.

“One cool thing about the DIY scene,” the 38-year-old says from behind the counter of Green Noise Records, the long-standing Portland-via-Eugene record store he purchased in 2004, “is the ability to take your weaknesses and make them into strengths.”

Growing up in Madison, Wis., Cheppaikode wanted to be part of the punk community ever since attending his first show in 1984, but from behind the scenes more than from the front of the stage. He spent his 20s working in distribution warehouses and record stores and talking—vainly—about getting his label going. By 1999, he had settled in Seattle, playing obscure international punk bands on an early Internet radio station. When a group from Sweden called the Don’t Cares heard his show and contacted him—asking if he could help spread their name in America—Cheppaikode spotted an opportunity.

The Don’t Cares’ 7-inch became Dirtnap’s first release. It didn’t sell, but Cheppaikode finally had his label. And it wasn’t long after that he stumbled across a hit—with, appropriately enough, the album Hit After Hit by Seattle throwback punks the Briefs.

“At the time, we had no distribution whatsoever, no advertising budget whatsoever, and we could barely afford to press the records, much less promote them at all. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,” he says. “And we still sold 10,000 of them.”

With the success of the Briefs and other regional acts such as the Spits, Dirtnap’s reputation expanded among Pacific Northwest garage-rock upstarts. “It was obvious to us that it was the label to be on, even before we were fully a band,” says Jesse Sutherland, keyboardist for Portland New Wavers the Epoxies. Their self-titled 2003 debut full-length for Dirtnap sold 15,000 copies.

But the label’s marquee band is also its greatest question mark. The Exploding Hearts had wanted to work with Dirtnap from its inception, but Cheppaikode was resistant. It wasn’t until he heard the Portland-based power-punk quartet’s Pitchfork-approved Guitar Romantic that he realized he’d made a mistake. He reissued the album to widespread acclaim. The buzz surrounding the band was getting feverish when, on July 20, 2003, three of its four members died in a van accident. The tragedy brought the label more attention than ever, but for all the wrong reasons. “When I used to sit around as a teenager and dream about getting interviewed by Rolling Stone, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Chappaikode says.

At the end of the all-too-brief Exploding Hearts era, Cheppaikode says the enforced regionalism that helped establish Dirtnap Records began to feel restrictive. And while he now puts out records by bands from outside the Northwest, he continues to work with local groups, such as Portland transplants the Mean Jeans.

“I remember sitting in the van and saying, ‘I know of one radical label out of Portland. That’s Dirtnap. We should get on that,’” says singer-guitarist Billy Jeans.

Cheppaikode and his wife plan to sell Green Noise and move to Austin in 10 more years. But Cheppaikode doubts he’ll ever separate himself from Dirtnap.

“I think I’ll always be doing the label in some capacity, even if it winds up just going back to me sitting on my bed folding up copies of 7-inches after I get off work at night,” he says. “I think it’s in my blood at this point.”

SEE IT: The Mean Jeans release their new album Thursday, Nov. 12, at Ground Kontrol, with White Fang and DJ Ken Dirtnap. 9 pm. Free. 21+.

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[SPAZZ POP] Finn Riggins loves life on the road. In fact, the Idaho spazz-pop trio is so committed to touring, it spent a staggering 245 days away from home last year. For many of the shows, it rolled up to bars and house venues on some interesting wheels: an old yellow school bus.

“It would get so cold, ’cause there was virtually no heating,” drummer Cameron Bouiss says of the band’s first ride. “We would all huddle and sit around the front of the bus around the one heater, desperately trying to warm up our hands.”

On the last day of 2006, Finn Riggins drove the bus to Portland to play a New Year’s Eve house party. It was there that the band met Jared and Brianne Mees, now the owners of the Tender Loving Empire label that has released the past three Finn Riggins records. “We showed up there and realized our school bus was bigger than the venue we were playing,” Lisa Simpson says, cracking up. “But we had a great time, and Jared’s been a good friend ever since.”

Though the band has since downsized to a touring van, it still does things its own way. With the recently released Vs. Wilderness, the group—Bouiss on an assortment of percussion, including a steel drum; Simpson on guitar and vocals; Eric Gilbert on keys and vocals—makes its strongest statement yet. Filled with hooky, upbeat songs about small towns, animals and Marie Antoinette, Vs. Wilderness refuses to stay in one place for more than a few moments. Finn Riggins uses genre as a stylistic jump rope, dabbling in New Wave synths, odd time signatures, and—especially on songs like lead single “Wake (Keep This Town Alive),” an anthemic stomper and Idahoan cousin to Arcade Fire’s Funeral—plenty of well-placed harmonies.

Even though Idaho’s music scene is small (“it’s really a little baby scene,” Gilbert jokes), it provides the sense of community that’s key to Finn Riggins’ philosophy. Until recently, all three members lived in the town of Hailey (population 7,844). Simpson and Gilbert now stay in Boise when they’re not on the road. The band considers Portland a second home, but it isn’t ready to give up its roots. “We really like being from Idaho,” Simpson says. “It gives us this sense of mystery. Who wouldn’t want to see a band from some podunk town that drives around in a school bus?”

SEE IT: Finn Riggins plays Friday and Saturday, Nov. 13 and 14, at the Wonder Ballroom with Built to Spill.

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[ANTIQUE POP] Dimes, can you spare a brother? Spare me your tedious mid-tempo strumming, wan melodies, sedate vocals, and especially, your humorless lyrical gloss on a CliffsNotes summary of a high-school American history textbook. Yes, your sophomore release, The King Can Drink the Harbor Dry, sure sounds pretty at first, with its tastefully restrained acoustic arrangements and careful harmonies—but it doesn’t take too many similar-sounding songs for those qualities to become liabilities.

And I had to get out my spyglass—sorry, magnifying glass—to parse your lyrics’ utterly illegible, faux-Colonial typeface. (Note: 18th-century calligraphers did not have 8-point fonts.) But by rights, they should come with ye olde Wikipedia links; songs address Winslow Homer, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony (“Susan be”—get it?—“good to me”) and a numbing array of others. One tune, “Walden and the Willow Tree,” ticks off Alexander Graham Bell, Poe, Thoreau, the Salem witch trials and Elias fucking Howe in just 11 lines. Sorry, guys, but if you’re not playing that for laughs, you’re gonna get ’em anyway. The pretentious cherries atop the liner notes are thank-yous—in an even tinier font, thank you—to a laundry list of historical figures.

We’ve heard this history-geek indie-folk before, but Johnny Clay’s songs lack the mordant wit, eccentric diction and high-wire rhymes of Colin Meloy’s evocations of antiquity. It’s commendable that the Dimes choose to apply their undeniably lovely sound to lyrical matter so far removed from the usual chamber-folk navel-gaze. But this album conjures history as seen through a hazy nostalgic squint, lacking the grit and spontaneity of real, lived experience. Truth be told, several songs sound less like folk-rooted ballads than mid-’80s Alan Parsons Project radio hits. If our predecessors had been this wussy, we never would’ve made it out of the 1700s.

SEE IT: The Dimes play Mississippi Studios twice on Saturday, Nov. 14. With Po’ Girl (7:30 pm, all ages) and with Casey Neill & the Norway Rats and Friday Mile (10 pm, 21+). $10 for each show.

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Born: 1972 in New York.

Latest release: NGH WHT—The Dead Emcee Scrolls with the Arditti Quartet, a collaboration with composer Thomas Kessler.

Why you care: Quick—name a slam poet other than Saul Williams. Guaranteed, if that were a question on Cash Cab, 10 out of 10 contestants would get kicked to the curb. But it isn’t just that Williams is the face—make that the only face—of a niche art form; it’s hard to find a performer, in any medium, who possesses the same level of intensity. (Hell, in the film Slam, he even made it seem plausible that a passionately delivered poem could save someone from getting shanked on a prison yard.) Already a cult phenomenon, Williams left the coffee-house circuit with 2001’s Amethyst Rock Star, a powerfully unique if overwhelming album setting his fiery spoken-word rants against an aggressive mix of electropunk, drum ’n’ bass and avant hip-hop. He refined his approach with 2007’s The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, finding the perfect collaborator in Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, whose production made Williams sound like an end-of-days preacher sermonizing amid a nuclear holocaust. But Williams is an artist best experienced live: As chaotic as his music can be on record, it explodes like an expertly constructed car bomb on stage.

Sounds like: Allen Ginsberg reincarnated as the frontman for Bad Brains.

For fans of: Zack de la Rocha, the Mars Volta, going to open-mic nights while on angel dust.

SEE IT: Saul Williams plays the Aladdin Theater on Sunday, Nov. 15, with CX Kidtronic & Tchaka Diallo, Earl Greyhound and American Fangs. 8 pm. $15. All ages.

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[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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IMAGE: Jason Quigley

For a band that’s frequently associated with all things geeky, Jesse and Emily Laney’s North Portland house hardly resembles an ode to Dungeons Dragons. Despite the odd thrift store gnome or tchotchke—and the Darth Vader helmet resting on a keyboard in the front room—it’s relatively tame for a group like World’s Greatest Ghosts, one that sings about evil monsters, magic potions and secret elixirs. Not until you walk down the basement steps to the band’s practice space, lined with concert posters of friends’ bands and K Records staples, does one realize that the house is more of a temple to the synth-rock quintet’s real unabashed obsession: playing live music.

In fact, sitting around a table at NoPo dive the Florida Room, it’s hard to get through a conversation without delving into a discussion of favorite shows and albums. “Have you heard the new Built to Spill yet?” guitarist Casey Laney interrupts. “The first track is one of the best album openers in years.” His brother Jesse quickly jumps in: “I was just going to say the same thing!”

Finishing each others’ sentences is nothing new for World’s Greatest Ghosts. Until recently, the four core members of the band—Casey and his brother Jesse, who sings and plays keyboards, Jesse’s wife and bassist Emily, and guitarist Brandon Anderson—all lived in the same house. It’s that closeness and familial bond that led to frequent arguments, laughs and missteps that inform its debut album, No Magic. Recorded by local producer Skyler Norwood—whose previous credits include work for Blind Pilot, Horse Feathers, and Talkdemonic besides moonlighting in Point Juncture, WA—No Magic is one of the best-sounding and -sequenced local efforts in years. From the opening “Phantastes,” a ringing, anthemic pop song with dual-guitars slithering like a snake trying to make its way out of a labyrinth, to the infectious singalong “On the Shore,” it’s an album that isn’t afraid to shake a leg and have some fun amid the turmoil.

“We don’t always love each other,” Jesse admits. “We’re all family and friends that have gone way back, but we still fight. I think it’s better to be a real band that has problems but still has so much fun than [one] who paints a pretty picture all the time but secretly hates each other.”

The Laneys moved to Portland in 2006 from outside Nashville, Tenn., on recommendation of a few friends and a desire to move away from any scene that emphasizes anything other than the music. Though Jesse jokes it’s actually because of his disdain for the South (“summers there are filled with humidity, ticks and assholes”), the brothers’ upbringing was surrounded by music: Dad Alan Laney is a well-known country and bluegrass songwriter. Still, Nashville and also New Orleans—where Jesse and Emily briefly lived before Hurricane Katrina—lacked anything resembling the Portland underground house show circuit that helped birth the current band.

For most of its first three years in existence, WGG rarely played a show in a traditional venue, instead hitting up almost every basement, living room and arcade in the city. “It was such an incredible experience,” Casey says. “Playing with punk bands and alongside really avant-garde people was rad. I mean, we’re a pop band, and to be submerged in that kind of scene really imparted a lot of good things on us.” Those wide-ranging influences are heard on No Magic, which jumps from synthensizer-led rave-ups (“Magick Words”) to songs like “Loudest Speaker,” the album’s closest thing to a ballad and only moment in its 33-minute run time where things slow down enough for you to catch your breath.

Following the mastering of the record in the spring, World’s Greatest Ghosts also had to pause for a second: Drummer John Damiani decided to move to Oklahoma City for grad school, and label Lucky Madison pushed the release of No Magic back to the fall. New time-keeper Eric Ambrosius was actually in attendance at Damiani’s last show with the band, a Tender Loving Empire showcase in June, and after just two months has already integrated himself into the World’s Greatest Ghosts family.

“We’re excited to record with him and see what happens when we don’t all live together,” Casey says. “It could be a disaster, but at least at the end of the day we’ll still be friends.”

SEE IT: World’s Greatest Ghosts release No Magic on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at Holocene with Swim Swam Swum and Wampire. 8:30 pm. $6. 21+.

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