#doug fir lounge
MHCP Year In Review 2012
Overall
Total bands seen: 144!
Approx annual ticket cost: about $1000 each (does not include any travel costs)
Number of cocktails consumed: 312ish
Number of drummers A got her picture taken with: 1
Weirdest Show:Alan Resnick opening for Lower Dens at Mississippi Studios
Rowdiest Crowd: Girl Talk (both at Sasquatch and at MFNW)
Loudest Show: A Place to Bury Strangers in Portland.
Furthest Travelled:A Place To Bury Strangers in Brighton, England.
Most Anticipated:Pulp
C’s Biggest Disappointment:Cat Power
A’s Biggest Disappointment:Black Keys
Most Boring Show:War on Drugs
Most crowded show:YACHT
Stinkiest Show:King Tuff
Surprisingly good:Nouvelle Vague (and would have been even better at a smaller venue)
Worst Attendance Yet Best Show:Cloud Nothings.
Best Band You’ve Never Heard Of:Ume
Best Venue: Doug Fir, but hoping for better bands to play there in 2013.
Up and Coming Venue: Bunk Bar! Surprisingly great bands played there this year and we can’t wait to see more.
Worst Venue: Rotture. Yikes.
Best Set Design:Foster the People
Most Fashionable Band: Santigold at Sasquatch
Most Memorable:Jezabels. It was on a boat a required a costume. We’ll remember it for a long time.
Worst Show:Cold War Kids (they only got one star).
C’s Best Show:Pulpat the Warfield Theater
A’s Best Show: Bon Iver at Sasquatch
Super huge thanks to: Music Scene PDX, Twisted Wire PDX, Portland Mercury, KINK, Your Mom
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Whitehorse + Dustin Johnsen at Doug Fir
Overall
- Tuesday night. Haven’t seen the Doug Fir this empty before.
- Do not order a glass of red wine at Doug Fir. Ever. Stick to the hard stuff or beer.
- Very quiet, soothing acoustic Portland based singer/songwriter.
- It’s the kind of music that is in the background while you quietly catch up with your friends. So that’s what we did.
- Husband and wife duo Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland didn’t disappoint. We were sitting at the bar and after one song we were drawn to finish our drinks and head to the stage. They have fantastic voices.
- There were a lot of M. Ward-esque moments.
- Doucet talked about Elliot Smith’s influence on his songwriting and gave some props to Portland.
- Definitely a lot of cords on stage to connect all those pedals, a stomping board and the array of microphones which includes old telephone receivers. We both fell in love with the great sound of their voices in the old telephone receivers.
- There was a lot of looping going on and we appreciate that. It definitely made the performance interesting and kept us guessing. We really liked that it was hard to predict what part of the song they would play live over the loops. For example, in one song they looped the guitars, vocals etc and ended the song by both playing a drum.
- They didn’t do the looping thing the entire show, they spent time just the two of them in the front of the stage in a permanent fret bone* playing some great songs, including a fantastic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.”
- The crowd was so small that people were sitting on the stairs to watch. Their music has a lot of energy so it’s gotta be hard to play for a crowd like that.
- We’d love to see this band opening for someone like Wilco or Ryan Adams. Or maybe Band of Horses it a better fit considering their name… Either way we want to see what they can do with a full band including drummer, bass player etc.
In Conclusion
We give this show 5 stars. One star for the stomp board. One star for excellent chemistry. Two stars for fret bone. One star for old telephone receiver microphones.
*Fret bone: when two guitarists play facing each other, instruments only inches apart. Usually includes jamming or face melting.
xoxo A + C
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PREVIEW: Whitehorse at Doug Fir Lounge, Tuesday December 4th, 2012.
What do you do when your Canadian co-worker who has excellent taste in music suggests you check out a band from his motherland?
This happened to me last week. The co-worker will remain anonymous, but the band is Whitehorse. As soon as I got the heads up about this band, I listened to their new record The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss and kind of fell in love. This husband and wife team (Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland) has chemistry, great voices and the kind of record that seems like it’s going to be amazing live. Good thing they are going to be in Portland at Doug Fir Lounge next week.
McClelland says: “We have a pretty complicated setup on stage. We’re looping rhythms. Luke has a kick drum and I have a stomp box, and we have seven guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, and tons of percussion. So for a lot of the songs, we’re building pretty complicated loops and playing along to that. We’re building it very organically on stage so anything can happen. It’s gone very wrong, and very right.”
So what do you do when your Canadian co-worker who has excellent taste in music suggests you check out a band from his motherland? You say thank you.
Whitehorse with Dustin Johnsen at Doug Fir Lounge Dec 4th. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm. $10 advance, $10 day of show. Photo credit Paul Wright.
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