By Christopher "CJ" Smith
As our coverage if the Portland music scene continues (check out yesterday's piece on the Thermals here), we admit: A lot of the reason we wanted to head out West was to talk to Eat Skull — to spend time in the awesomely dirty basement where they record and hit a house party they were playing. (There's no better place to see a band like Eat Skull than in someone's basement!)
We've been a fan of their lo-fi sound for a bit. We wanted to include them in our piece on lo-fi punk but just couldn't hook it up in time for that. (We did try to make up for it by including them in our accompanying muxtape.)
Eat Skull are lo-fi, but they also are crafting a sound that Tom Lax from Siltbreeze (Eat Skull's label) has helped coin as "sh--gaze" (technically the term came from Pink Reason frontman Kevin Debroux, jokingly describing fellow lo-fi act Pschedelic Horsesh--'s sound). The term has blown up so much that it was even featured in NME and the June issue of Spin. Not shockingly, the rest of the "scene" is filled out by other Siltbreeze bands, like Tyvek and Pink Reason, as well as former Siltbreezer's Times New Viking.
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By CJ Smith
Our expansive ode to Portland's music scene is now available on MTVNews.com, but there's still so much more we have to offer from our trek to the great Northwest. For the next week, we're going to be offering up profiles on the plethora of bands included in our Portland piece — from seasoned veterans to young acts on the brink of stardom. Be sure to keep checking back for all things Portland.
We're gonna start big with a Portland staple: the Thermals.
Their 2006 opus, The Body, the Blood, the Machine, is one of our favorite rock records of the past few years, so when we heard the duo were hard at work on their fourth record, Now We Can See, we made a beeline straight to their small warehouse practice space in Portland (down the hall from Stephen Malkmus'), where they told us they are intent on continuing the hi-fi sound they began to mine with their last release. And with John Congleton on producing duties — known for his work with Explosions in the Sky and the Polyphonic Spree — they're in good hands if they want an epic sound.
From the sounds of things, the new record is still a ways off from release (late 2008/ early 2009 on a still TBD label). So for now, check out this live lo-fi take of some stuff they've been working on. Two great new cuts: 100 percent Thermals, 100 percent rock.
