Van Dyke Parks plays Portland Wednesday. Immediately tweet the following peeps: 1) Beach Boys/Brian Wilson obsessives, 2) students of rock history and 3) anyone interested in the intersection of popular and classical music. Talk about a rare opportunity: Though Parks has made records since 1966, this is the Los Angeles composer/arranger/producer’s first concert tour—and it’s only four dates long. Even in L.A., Parks seldom performs in public.

Parks’ résumé reads like a survey of American entertainment in the second half of the 20th century: He was a child actor with a recurring role on The Honeymooners, a session musician for such ’60s legends as the Byrds and Tim Buckley, lyricist for legendary “lost” Beach Boys album Smile, and producer of Randy Newman’s and Ry Cooder’s first albums and Phil Ochs’ last one. Later, Parks headed Warner Bros. Records’ Audio-Visual Department, inventing the concept of “music television,” and composed scores for film and TV.

His dark-side-of-Disney arrangements have endeared him to modern musicians, from Joanna Newsom to Silverchair—and, notably, several artists whose parents Parks knew, such as Rufus Wainwright and Lowell George’s daughter, Inara. He’s accompanied on this mini-tour by Clare and the Reasons, a band led by folk-bluesman Geoff Muldaur’s daughter. Parks’ own albums include his debut, Song Cycle, a baroque-pop mad-scientist masterpiece replete with puns both verbal and musical; Discover America, beating worldbeat by a decade-plus in introducing Calypso rhythms and repertoire to American ears; and Jump!, which revived the Old South fables of B’rer Rabbit at the dawn of the P.C. era.

Following is a chunk of WW’s conversation with the 67-year-old Parks, by phone from his L.A. home.

A live appearance by Van Dyke Parks seems almost like an apparition. Will this be your first visit to Portland?
No, I’ve been there once before. I came up to play a political rally once, in 1964, with a group called the Brandywine Singers, who had a member whose father was a Senator by the name of Corbett [apparently, State Senator Alfred Corbett, then campaigning for Secretary of State]. Anyway, that was my first introduction to Portland, and my last, and I’m looking forward to coming back!

What is it about Clare Muldaur’s music that inspired you to join her for your first-ever tour?
Well, it’s very interesting, because, of course, I knew her father, I met him in 1964 when I lived in Cambridge, Mass. Her father was the BMOC in my book, the big man on campus, the most likely to succeed, the most adroit of the white blues singers. He had, really, a vise-like grip on the blues, an unaffected and seamless interpretation of blues. And of course, Geoff was a member of the [Jim] Kweskin Jug Band—

As was Fritz Richmond, who was a Portland resident for much of his life.
Yes, Fritz and I were very good friends, I spoke with him the week he died, and I loved Fritz very much. He was so sweet. And, of course, honored in his time, with induction into the Smithsonian — one of his basses was put in the Smithsonian.

So there it was, the groundwork was laid, and when Clare came out to California, she introduced herself. In fact, I didn’t know she had attended Berklee School of Music. She and her husband went together, which, to me, is a great school, and it suggested she might have some musical ability, and I listened to her music, and I liked it very much. I liked it because it was outside the box, it had some premeditative value, she’s thoughtful about it, Olivier, her husband is musically literate, of course, and I thought it would be fun. When she asked me if I would do a co-bill, I thought it would be fun, because I love stringed instruments and so forth, and I admire the individuality of her music, and I was very honored. And I am 67, with a great deal of effort behind me in film and television scoring and a lot of arranging. And basically, just staying in my cubbyhole, I have managed to put three kids through college, which I think is a wonderful thing for a musical racketteer. And when she said, “How ’bout it? Come out on the road!” I thought, well, why not. I didn’t have a reason to refuse. So that’s what this is all about.

And I assume you’ll be bringing a huge entourage and ensemble along? [joking]
No, I’m coming alone, but she and her husband suggested they might help me by backing me up on some of my own repertory, so that’s nifty.

So, will you be performing some solo, and some accompanied by The Reasons?
To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I just don’t know. But it’s taken me a long time to learn how to say that and feel comfortable with it. I think that this’ll be a great discovery, and we’ll have had much rehearsal by the time we hit Portland, so we should sound fine.

You’ve worked with several “second generation” artists. I like to call them the “folk brats.”
Yes, and to great delight. Actually, I started out loving folk music. That’s why I entered what became the popular music business. It was all about folk music. And that’s where I’m kind of gravitating to again at this point. I’m going up and doing a couple of what one might brand as folk fests in Canada starting in March. I’m real comfortable with that. I like music that is idiomatic, that is closer to the street than to Carnegie Hall. Though I can tell you fairly, I like all music that’s good.

But what about working with the kids of your old cohort, like Inara George and Rufus Wainwright?
Well, I find, just generally, in both those cases, I can fairly say, there is no resemblance in the focus of the parent and the child. And that’s amazing to me. My favorite blues singer was Howlin’ Wolf, as was Lowell George’s. I don’t think you’d hear a growl from Inara that’s close to the blues-centered obsession that was Lowell’s trademark. Rufus Wainwright is escapist in his work, highly entertaining, but hardly so fact-bound as Loudon. My favorite blues singer was Howlin’ Wolf, as was Lowell George’s. I don’t think you’d hear a growl from Inara that’s close to the blues-centered obsession that was Lowell’s trademark. And at the same time, let’s look at Rufus Wainwright. Rufus is an escapist, I think, in his work. I look at it as highly entertaining, but hardly so fact-bound or a product of reportage as Loudon’s. Rufus, to me, has a fictive value. Loudon has a great value as a person who documents our times. And as a matter of fact, I think Loudon is one of a kind, and i really do believe, to use a hackneyed expression that really applies to him, and brings him honor, is a national treasure. So I look at a lot of this with reserved judgment about what these kids are actually up to.

Do you think it’s nature, nurture, or nepotism that’s gotten them this far in the music world?
I think it’s absolutely the opposite of nepotism. I think these kids make it because, probably, they want desperately to get out of the long shadow that fame brought their parents. I think that it’s probably very uncomfortable. My own kids, for example, although they’re entirely musical, and certainly as gifted as I am, have run like athletes away from the idea of doing anything that has to do with music. Partly because they’ve seen the uncertainty of such a job, it takes great deal of sacrifice and family loyalty to pursue a music career. I’m kind of glad that my kids escaped the same dangers that those that you’ve mentioned have decided to go ahead and entertain. But I’ve enjoyed those experiences with those kids, that one would think just because they have some legacy, that they are there.

Condolences on the passing of Rufus’ mother, whom I believe you knew.
Yes, that was a very difficult moment time for him, because, of course, he was totally close to his mother, and she brought him up singlehandedly. And he found his father late in life, and I’m so glad they have reached, they’re past the treaty and into an affectionate relationship.

It’s interesting to me that Rufus’ most Loudon-esque song, in terms of drawing from personal experience, is his song about his father, “Dinner at Eight”, that is most identifiably autobiographical.
Yeah, and Loudon, of course, has externalized a lot of that stuff. They have made trade out of the most intimate aspects of their relationships. That’s something that doesn’t so much interest me. I don’t pay too much attention to that. I don’t pay attention to the thoughts that drive the feelings in the music. I’ve done some arranging for Rufus, but I don’t think about the words so much. I thought about words at the time when I served Phil Ochs, and other people who had a great sense of, a similar sense of social recognizance, an interest in improving society, its aims, getting us out of the war, improving race relations, feeding the hungry, thinking about the dispossessed.

Those were the important issues of another age. Now those issues are, in fact, old and in the way. People want to have a good time these days, it seems to me, and the present tense, I think, celebrates what once the French branded as the petit bourgeoisie. I think its a sad state of affairs. I enjoyed being introduced to the music business when music had, songs had, a social content and obsession. I enjoyed that, and it made it all something legit. And it also made people of a lesser musical ability able to be accepted because of what they were saying not how they were saying it.

This year I had a chance to work with two such Sprechstimme [speak-singing] artists, and those would be Bob Dylan, who made it an art form, and Ry Cooder. We were in a movie together [the Howard Zinn documentary, The People Speak; Parks and Cooder accompanied Dylan's performance of Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi".]. I enjoyed that, because they’re both giants to me just reminded me where we had come from. Which, of course, is basically all that really drives me, is the study of how we got here. It’s what drives my songwriting. And I’m just hoping that there are enough people in Portland who remember who I used to be, to fill the seats. Because my only phobia is walking into a room to play and having an empty seat right in front of me.

Well, Portland is about nothing if not hip cachet, which you have in spades, sir.
Well, that’s really a hopeful thought, and I’m going to keep that in mind, but i don’t want to disappoint anyone. I think my best work is ahead of me, I plan to do another album, well, I’ve been doing it, and I think I’m going to let it go sometime around August or September. I’m not going to perform anything from it, because I think i have a greater fear of pirates than has an oiler captain in the Straits of Hormuz. I have been very concerned about getting a fair return for the labor it takes to create songs and that seems like a faint, diminishing aim these days.

I wanted to ask you, in fact, about the effects of new technologies, considering your history with being ahead of the game when it came to videos being used to bolster music, or being another way of communicating for musicians. You sort of foresaw that whole trend, though I don’t know if you foresaw the huge impact it would have.
Well, I didn’t. I’ll tell ya, I did suggest a thing called MTV to [legendary Warner Bros. Records President] Mo Ostin. I was directly under the man in the corporate org. chart, I was directly under the head of the company. And I made movies, but I made them with a profit structure that I hoped would keep artists from having to pursue the ramrod promotion that touring demands. So many people that I knew and loved, and they would include Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and, of course, Lowell George, and Peter Ivers, and many more who died from drug related deaths, and, I think, all in an effort to stay in the fast lane. So, video, to me, was a way of developing a new revenue stream for artists. And in that respect, what we see in videos of today is entire different. The artist has no participation in any of that.

And if anything, it comes out of their bottom line.
Oh yeah, they’re charged for it. So, fortunately, I say that I was a lucky fella to be able to escape the mendacity of the record business, the very creed of greed that killed it. I think executive mismanagement and contract abuse — Joni Mitchell was the first famous singer to stand up against these things called controlled composition contracts, which is where they pay you for ten songs even if you have sixteen songs on an album.

So, all kinds of things have been done that are not only illegal, but downright felonious. So, copyright abuse didn’t start with college students downloading, it started with the very executives, the mice that were guarding the cheese in the record business, and they destroyed it. I got a chance to escape all that, and find a quieter living, I escaped the ravages of fame, I escaped the ravages of touring, and now, I’m curious. Now that I’ve taken care of my parental obligations, I’m curious about what all that can be, and I’m looking forward to the idea of just sitting in an intimate room and enjoying some music that happened to have been of my own invention.

Did you foresee the impact of the internet on the music business?
No I didn’t, actually, to be honest, I didn’t see that. And I’ve always thought that everything would be okay with respect to intellectual property rights. I thought be it would be okay somehow. All that concerned me was the lack of principle in the record business itself. Which is why I absented myself. But I only did it in terms of leaving the industry itself, the management responsibilities of being a bureaucrat at a record company. But in doing that, I found a great life force, and one that has introduced me to serve a whole new generation of artists, and that is to play the job of arranger, which to me is a vital contributive function in the making of album, and I’m quite content in it.

Can you tell me about your extensive arranging work on Joanna Newsom’s album, Ys? Were you familiar with her work prior to that project?
No, no, no. She came in to Hollywood, she rented a hotel room and a harp, and asked me to come up and listen to her pieces. And, shoot, I was there for about twenty minutes of arpeggiation, and I told her that if she wanted me to arrange, I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do the whole album. Because I thought she had a tremendous rapture, that she seemed to be in a rapture, and one that I would want to defend, and help channel into a reasonable production.

So I decided on a small orchestra, one that is almost a matter of habit for me; it’s as small as a large sound can be, that can still get small. You know what I mean, a string quartet, basically, is in the face. So, if you add a few strings, you get to a point of transparency. And that’s what strings can do. So I basically use a string orchestra, with five woodwinds, and one French horn. That’s in the case of Joanna, and Inara George as well. Same orchestra. I’ve used that same orchestra for Rufus, too. I like ‘em all. Now I’m working on a record for another chanteuse, a girl from Guatemala, and the whole album is based on a variety or romantic classics from South America and Caribbiana, and it’ll have a larger orchestra. And I’m going to debut that album in Denmark, on July 4th, and that’ll be a thrill. That is with a much larger orchestra.

What’s that artist’s name?
Her name is Gaby Moreno, and the festival is called Roskilde. I’ll be playing these pieces for an audience of 75,000 people, if you can believe it.

Conducting?
I’ll conduct the orchestra, yeah. I have a lot of work to do ahead of that. That’s an athletic process for me. But, you know, I wear many hats. I’m now scoring a Dutch picture, today I’m working on one of two arrangements I have to do for a new Australian group. I think it’s wonderful to me, to be at the age of 67 and still be allowed to have this opportunity. And I think it’s partly a testament to fact that I’ve always worked very hard, not to be immediately accepted by the fashion of the day, but to know that I did my best work, I couldn’t have done any better, and in the process, I think I’ve created some durable goods, and that has made me a contender as a service for these new musicians. I hope that’s the case. I like to believe it is.

Van Dyke Parks plays Mississippi Studios on Wednesday.

Links:
Van Dyke Parks
Gaby MorenoSpace

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Due out on April 20 (insert 4/20 joke here) via Kill Rock Stars,Thistled Spring is supposedly a slightly warmer set from the quartet. How do we know this? The press release told us! Here’s all the deets about Horse Feathers’ spring-themed full-length:

Justin Ringle has turned out to be a songwriter strongly influenced by the seasons. His Portland, Oregon-based band’s last record, the critically acclaimed House With No Home, was a winter album par excellence, from its chilly cover art to its frostbitten songs of loneliness and loss.

But from the first piano notes of the title track, plinking like spring rain on a windowpane, Thistled Spring shows itself to be an album of rebirth, renewal, and fragile hope. The sun is out in the world evoked by this music, and in the first couple of songs it feels like the sun of early spring, glinting on a frosty river where the ice is just breaking up. “Thistled Spring” and “Starving Robins” both continue Ringle’s trademark use of space in songwriting, but in this case the space is full of potential, like the spaces between drops of melting snow. The sun gets stronger and warmer as the album moves along, shining most brilliantly in the jaunty, joyous “Belly of June”, where Ringle’s characteristically spare vocals become fattened up with delicious harmonies as the music swells with strings and banjo. Things get positively hot in “Cascades” and “The Drought” before blossoming into the full-fledged pop Americana gem “Vernonia Blues”.

Thistled Spring as a whole displays a rich progression – more textured and lush than the band’s previous two albums, it also captures the skillful interplay of the band’s current touring lineup of Ringle, violinist Nathan Crockett, cellist Catherine Odell, and multi-instrumentalist Sam Cooper. Lyrically Ringle continues to explore broken relationships, longing, and pain, but this album has an undercurrent of heat that translates to a thawing of frozen hearts, and music which rushes like spring torrents, all of which points to a resurgence of life after a hard winter.

Track listing:

01. Thistled Spring
02. Starving Robins
03. Belly of June
04. Cascades
05. This Bed
06. The Drought
07. Vernonia Blues
08. As a Ghost
09. The Widower
10. Heaven’s No Place

We’ll share an MP3 when we have one. I can’t wait to hear this thing.

Links:
Horse FeatherSpace
Kill Rock Stars

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Do me a favor: Go back and listen to Let It Die again if you didn’t get it the first time. I think it’s a hugely underrated album from Portland’s premier rock band.

“Caught in the Storm”

“Already Gone”

Links:
Shaky HandSpace
More TSMDT vids (including ones from Blitzen Trapper, Richmond Fontaine and Parenthetical Girls).

Image: Screen cap from the video.

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1. It’s pretty cheap.
Feeling the pinch of the recession and Oregon’s own fiscal disasters, the Portland Jazz Fest has some pretty nice ticket prices. Our big gripe with last year’s fest was that it was too expensive for most young adults with poorly paying jobs to attend, it bears repeating that while most of the package deals are sold out, there are still $25 or cheaper individual tickets available for each show (including the legendary Pharaoh Sanders; and the crazy-awesome Mingus Big Band—under the direction of Charles Mingus’ widow, Sue).

2. It’s actually a jazz festival.
Don’t take that for granted. A lot of so-called jazz festivals around the world include a host of artists deemed palatable for the mainstream in order to support just a few jazz artists. The Portland Jazz Fest brings in a lot of great national acts and they also support the local jazz community with workshops, in-school performances and the like. To learn more about the festival’s history, see this interview with longtime artistic director Bill Royston.

3. They’re serious about this Nordic Jazz thing.
The Nordic countries have been into jazz from its earliest days. Here’s a Swedish bandleader, Sven Arefeldt, singing and performing a tune from 1938.

Guys like Christian Wallumrød (playing this year’s fest) are still pushing the music’s boundaries in Norway, where folks are apparently pretty hardcore about their jazz. It’s worth noting that Wallumrød also collaborates with some glitchy electro-jazz musicians, with real weird results; and that another Nordic performer at this year’s fest, Trygve Seim, can be found on YouTube playing a tiny soprano sax to the tune of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

4. Pharaoh Sanders
I know that some people want to like jazz, and have dipped their toes into some Miles Davis or John Coltrane. Well Pharaoh Sanders (once a Coltrane sideman and a groundbreaking artist in his own right) is a giant who can safely be mentioned in the same breath with those folks. Best of all, he hasn’t lost his tone or his sound. Here’s some 2008 footage of him playing Coltrane tunes.

We’re pretty stoked. So, yes, we might poke fun at the ever-present sponsorships and the boomers in the audience, but the festival’s booking team has outdone itself once again. We couldn’t be more excited about actually attending some of these shows. Expect lots of jazz fest coverage in WW.

Links:
Portland Jazz Festival

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And second effort Ordinary Everyday (got it right up top!!!) Balloons (out March 2) does not disappoint. The band has subtley expanded its sound without ruining the charm of a two-voiced, Low-esque minimal pop group built on puzzling/poetic lyrics and labyrinthine composition (while always keeping their hooks intact). Phew, I guess it’s not so easy to sum A Weather up.

Download audio file (GiantStairs.mp3)

Here on “Giant Stairs,” we hear the volume dial and distortion nudged up a notch, with rockier percussion and a bit more forceful vocal delivery from Aaron Gerber and Sarah Winchester than we’re accustomed to. Cove does reach rock level assertiveness at times, but it seldom moves with such confidence and purpose as it does here: “Giant Stairs” is the most legitimate A Weather “single” to date (whatever that means these days), and around 1:30 it starts sounding like something from Pedro the Lion’s Control. Unlike Bazan’s accusatory lyrics, though, Gerber and Winchester work on something much more open to interpretation.

To tell the truth, I’ve no idea what they’re talking about on “Giant Stairs”—it sounds part monster movie and part relationship metaphor. But when the Au-style piano comes in (2:41), I lose my shit and forget about the lyrics altogether. Sarah and Aaron go into their refrain (”It’s not the fall that we should be afraid of/ It’s the quick stop”) and all the song’s musical elements come back for one last blast.

Give me a dozen more listens and I’m sure I’ll have built a theory around the meaning of this tune. But right now it just sounds perfect, and I’m glad to have A Weather back.

Links:
A WeatherSpace
Team Love

Photo courtesy of the band.

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Link:
Portland Music Awards

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by CASEY JARMAN, ZACH KLASSEN & MICHAEL MANNHEIMER

This year’s Bender—an annual festival of garage rock, punk and lo-fi sounds at Northwest Portland pinball bar Slabtown—isn’t packed to the brim with big names. But it is packed with carefully curated, solid-to-excellent bands you should be more familiar with. So, to properly introduce you, we’ve decided (in the midst of this awards season) to bestow honors on the Bender’s bands based on the one thing nearly all of the festival’s bands have in common: their filthiness. So without further ado, we present the first annual Scuzzies.

Greg Ashley has had his fair share of bands: the Mirrors, the Strate Coats, the Gris Gris. But the Oakland-based singer-songwriter’s solo psych-pop material is more interesting than any of that, with wide-ranging influences from cool jazz to the Beach Boys and a playbook full of old-school self-recording techniques. This is good songwriting made better by a healthy love of lo-fi recording. Saturday, Feb. 6. 9:20 pm.

You can’t spend this much time eating leftover pizza in basements and expect your jeans—mean as they may be—to stay clean. Portland’s Mean Jeans play old-school, melodic punk rock weaved with a peculiar fashion sense that’s as much influenced by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as it is by the Ramones. New disc Are You Serious? proves the Jeans have the hyperactive chops to rock the shit out of bored kids and lost grown-ups alike. Sunday, Feb. 7. 10:50 pm.

They don’t come much dirtier than Steve Turner: His best-known band was called Mudhoney (a Russ Meyer film and ingredients that can turn silken hair into dreadlocks overnight), and it was the grandpappy of grunge. We’re not sure exactly what to expect of Turner’s new band, Cheap Flight (the Seattle icon has shown interest in country, blues rock and blistering punk throughout his career), which makes its debut tonight, but we’d put 10 bucks on it sounding dirty. Saturday, Feb. 6. 11:10 pm.

With screams and emphatic ululations often posing as words, Ty Segall is a pro at keeping things short and not so sweet. Segall’s tunes may not often meet the three-minute mark, but that doesn’t stop him from charging through fun, lo-fi rock that colors outside the lines. Friday, Feb. 5. 10 pm.

It’s the first few chords from the Hammond organ that give The Foxgloves away: The band is channeling ’60s pop at its most lofty and innocuous. The quintet combines thin electric guitar with snappy drums to create a sound that pulls from groups like the Jam and the Monkees. Saturday, Feb. 6. 3:20 pm.

Not to be confused with San Francisco’s Girls, The Girls hail from Seattle and bring layers of buzzing synth to their speedy post-punk. The future looks a lot like 1983, and you’re invited to witness it: The Girls’ brand of angular rock, with staccato guitar strums and dystopian lyrics shouted from all corners, is going back to the future. Friday, Feb. 5. 9:20 pm.

Even if King Louie—the nom de grunge of Louisiana native Louie Bankston—never makes another lick of music in Portland, he’ll always be famous for co-writing the grimiest blast of pop-punk this city has ever seen. Louie moved to Portland in 2000 and helped shape the sound of the Exploding Hearts’ Guitar Romantic, but he’s remained active since then, releasing numerous full-lengths for Goner Records (the Stax/Volt of garage labels) and debuting a new band for Bender. If anyone questions his scuzz merits, just know that this is a guy who once stole money and food from a family he was staying with in Beaverton. Saturday, Feb. 6. 10 pm.

Unless its baker has decided to go the Voodoo route and inject his or her delectables with cough syrup, there’s really nothing dirty about a cupcake. That is, until you hear the spiky, sweet punk-pop tunes of Oakland’s Dirty Cupcakes, an all-female trio that covers the Stones’ “Get Off of My Cloud” and sounds like Shonen Knife and the Vivian Girls. They’re cute on the outside, but looks can be deceiving. Sunday, Feb. 7. 7:40 pm.

Why do the Spider Babies deserve a spot in the scuzzy hall of fame? Well, the band got there by doing what it does best: drinkin’, fuckin’ and fightin’ its way to the top. In the early ’90s, Spider Babies borrowed the best bits of rockabilly and snotty ’70s punk, adding lots of crude sex jokes. To honor its 18th anniversary, Spider Babies is playing a reunion show filled with “hits” like “Junior High School Cuties” and “You’re Bi.” Keep it classy, guys. Sunday, Feb. 7. 11:30 pm.

SEE IT: The Bender runs Feb. 5 through 7 at Slabtown. Matinee shows are free. Evening shows are $12 daily or $25 for weekend pass (until Friday night). 21+. Full lineup at slabtownbar.net.

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Emancipator Safe In The Steep Cliffs

(1320)

[ELECTRORGANIC] If you turned on the radio in 1939 and heard the Ink Spots’ “If I Didn’t Care,” you’d be able to easily identify crooning voices, a softly strummed acoustic guitar and a touch of piano. Turn the radio on today and playing “name that sound” is a much tougher chore. Only the most astute producer could identify the software, samples, effects and recording techniques used to make a hit in the 21st century.

But even with such convolution of the recording process, many listeners search for music that sounds organic. Emancipator’s Doug Appling has that down. His first full-length, Soon it Will Be Cold Enough to Build Fires, he recorded in 2006 at the tender age of 19. It sounded equally inspired by cool jazz, spy-movie soundtracks and Everlast’s 1998 single “What It’s Like.” But at its best, the disc felt altogether unpretentious and unidentifiably organic; familiar, even. It was the music playing at the dance club in your dreams.

Appling, now based in Portland and somewhat of an internet sensation, has only refined his process for Safe in the Steep Cliffs. The disc is a thicker, guttier release than Soon, fusing Emancipator’s freaky jazz side (“Kamakura,” a collaboration with Japanese saxophonist Uyama Hiroto) with a healthy dose of inspiration from guys like Richard D. James and DJ Shadow (“Ares,” “Bury Them Bones”).

There’s an overarching smoothness on Safe that at times pushes Emancipator into the New Age category. But it’s that sheen which rewards repeated listens: You’ll spend more time figuring out how Safe makes you feel than how it was made. CASEY JARMAN.

Oracle Wake

(Self-Released)

[TRICK HOP] It’s hard to believe Oracle used to be a drab acoustic duo. On the band’s sophomore record, Wake, siblings Orianna and Michael Herrman are joined by producer Keith Schreiner (of Dahlia) for a set of down-tempo, shifting electronic soundscapes. And though the band is clearly aiming to ride the current wave of electronic-based artists like Pyramiddd, it comes off instead like an adult-contemporary version of trip hop.

Often, on songs like “The Way You Move Me” and “Ethereal One,” the gurgling backdrops and Orianna’s icy vocals leave the listener feeling cold. Though Wake is trying to sound modern, it’s hard to get past the fact that much of the album is stuck in the ’90s. The canned, whooshing scratching noises in “An Inch to an Eye”—which sound like one of those pocket DJ toys all my friends used to annoy their parents in middle school—only distract from the strength of the simple arrangements.

Oracle is obviously gunning for Portishead territory, but the thing the band forgets is that the U.K. art-rock outfit completely changed direction on Third, its 2008 comeback album. To take an older sound (in this case, lead-footed hip-hop beats and acoustic guitar) and update it for a new decade, you can’t just continue to pillage the same trusty records. Wake isn’t a bad album; it’s just one that belongs in another era. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

SEE IT: Oracle plays Thursday, Feb. 4, at Dante’s with Storm Large. 9:30 pm. $8 in advance, $10 at the door. 21+. Emancipator plays Friday, Feb. 5, at Roseland Theater with Bassnectar. 9 pm. $20. All ages.

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IMAGE: Michelle Filepp

[GLITCH FOLK] Is it possible to describe a record as “organically electronic”? It is when the artist is somehow both a computer programmer and a self-professed Luddite. Obviously, singer-songwriter Tom Filepp enjoys contradictions. But the music he makes is not a simple juxtaposition: Under the name Cars & Trains, he blends the digital and the human so tightly, it’s hard to see the stitching.

“I really like to blur the lines,” says the softspoken 29-year-old. “Where it’s difficult to tell where the electronic stuff starts and where the live instrumentation starts.”

His aesthetic goals haven’t always been so subtle. Growing up a few miles north of Manhattan, Filepp’s early years as a musician were spent in blunt-force metal and hardcore punk bands, and his introduction to electronic music came via the industrial melodrama of Trent Reznor. It wasn’t until he went away to college in Boston and “begrudgingly” bought an acoustic guitar that his taste expanded past just the loud and abrasive. He began listening to early-20th-century Americana, drawn in by the crackling, antiquated sonics of prewar blues records.

“If you listen to an old Robert Johnson recording, there’s something so haunting about it that you’ll never find in a modern recording,” he says. “You can feel the environment, in a way.”

As his interest in new-millennial technology intersected with his exploration of old-school folk, Filepp started writing songs to reconcile the two interests. He issued Rusty String, his first full-length album as Cars & Trains, in 2007, the year he moved to Portland. It established his template—skittering drum loops and buzzing, digitized ephemera flickering around warmly plucked guitar, banjo and viola and his own plaintive, understated voice—but the newly released The Roots, the Leaves refines it. It is a dense effort, bolstered by Filepp’s greater confidence as a producer and a heightened focus on lyrics, threading together images of decaying urbanity—“abandoned buildings,” “old cars in junkyards,” “mossy powerlines”—being overtaken by the natural world. The picture is somber, but Filepp calls it “a celebration of minute details.”

“It fascinates me how people in cities deal with the absence of nature,” he says, “and how whatever you do, nature’s going to come back and kick it in the ass anyway.”

SEE IT: Cars & Trains releases The Roots, the Leaves on Saturday, Feb. 6, at Backspace with Helios, Benoît Pioulard and the Harvey Girls. 9 pm. $6. All ages.

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IMAGE: Courtesy of Eyedea

Kava, for general anxiety and insomnia. This stuff works on the same receptors as classical benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, etc.) but is more anxiolytic than hypnotic in effect, so you won’t wake up with your face on the floor wondering what the hell you did the day before. And the best part is, you can pick this stuff up at virtually any health food store in America.

Kratom, for depression and lethargy. The official name for the plant is Mitragyna speciosa. It has hundreds of alkaloids that work differently in different doses. Some of the alkaloids are opiate agonists, so this stuff can be as addictive as heroin, and risk of overdose is real. Start slow and be careful.

Papaver somniferum, for pain and relaxation. This is illegal (and again, addictive), but you can order small amounts off of the Internet and at some flower shops. The active ingredients are morphine and codeine. Powerful stuff. But this is the plant most painkillers are extracted from.

Salvia divinorum, meditation aid/inner discovery. Still legal in the U.S., this is a fast-acting tryptamine psychedelic. I have long been an advocate for the use of psychedelics as an aid to self-discovery. Don’t overdo it, though. You want to come back more found, not more lost.

Eyedea’s Total Home Flu Remedy This is my favorite one: Lock yourself in a room and watch funny movies. You’d be surprised by how much laughing can heal!

SEE IT: Eyedea and Abilities play Hawthorne Theatre Sunday, Feb. 7, with Dosh and Animal Farm. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.

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