A very warm snow was falling and filling the streets with dirty slush when my brother and I arrived at the Someday Lounge. The week previous, a very heavy (for the balmy Northwest) snowstorm had locked up the city for days and made even the smallest of chores into a hellish inconvenience; now, my fears were rising that local favorites Old Growth and opening act The Alialujah Choir would cancel.
Fortunately, despite our soaked boots and damp jackets, both the venue and the bands seemed raring to go. As part of local paper the Willamette Weekly’s concert series “Portland Makes Music,” both bands were briefly interviewed and then performed. I’d only been to the Someday Lounge once prior, and had forgotten some of the décor- at one point in the first set, I glanced around and realized that there was a full-size, fully made bed on a platform above the main entrance. But no stair or ladder. Go figure.
Unbeknown to me, The Alialujah Choir were performing their first show ever; amazingly, the debut did not disappoint in the slightest. My attention first came grudgingly (professionalism, y’know), and then with a grain of salt, and then with a hand-stinging round of applause by the end of their set. The trio of Adam Shearer, Adam Selzer and the semi-titular Alia Farah perform in a gently sad vein of pop music, liberally flavored with the kind of rustic wonder that ’60s revivalists made so immortal. Their harmonies are slow but powerful; both Shearer and Selzer have high, piercing voices that complement Farah’s murmur well. The set was dominated by acoustic strums, and Farah’s keyboard, although a single drum beat offhandedly by Selzer and a harmonium tinkled through one of Shearer’s numbers. Not surprisingly, both Shearer and Selzer are already involved in other Portland bands, but it was the Farah-led “Dust Has Covered Everything” that moved me the most. The slow and agonizing image of “dust has covered everything/ That I used to love” drew out something in me that a first performance rarely does.
After a brief break and WW’s interview, Old Growth came to the stage, but rather than their usual thundering rock, we received an acoustic set more in the vein of Gram Parsons than Led Zeppelin. A personal issue had called away bassist Luke Clements, leaving frontman/guitarist John Magnifico and drummer/back-up vocalist Ben Muha to entertain us, and did they- although I confess to being a fan, I’d never seen them perform in such a quiet setting and a different kind of band played that night than I’d seen in them before.
Switching between harmonica and vocals, Magnifico has a style distinctively informed by Neil Young- in particular, his rougher ’70s years, when he had begun to see the light of garage rock shining strong again. I asked him later about the name “Old Growth;” it’s their love of everything old-fashioned and simple in rock music, everything rustic and ancient and alive. It shows their performances- Muha is a tight and muscular drummer and Magnifico’s harmonica mostly serves to highlight the beat, particularly in “Machine Life”. Normally an angry rebuttal of a song “I don’t want to work until I break and spill/ I don’t want to be the one who moves in on the kill,” the acoustic arrangement highlighted the sadness that lies under all such anger and frustration.
Old Growth cycled through a kind of grimy folksiness and a nearly California pop sound to a full on country rock song (albeit from soul roots). Their cover of “The Dark End of the Street” was undoubtedly more indebted to the Flying Burrito Brothers than to the original James Carr, but was still a highlight of the show. From their upcoming album Under the Sun, “Setting Sun” showcased Muha and Magnifico’s harmonies wonderfully; the lyrics “I am one with a setting sun/ Before we flower, we are buds that come undone” are a kind of poetry that their garage rock heritage doesn’t often show.
If the show lacked anything, it definitely was the deep bass growl that Clements brings; an acoustic show is great, but Old Growth are first and foremost rockers and their sound needs that. As my brother and I sludged back out into the night, our heads were filled with a different kind of sound from a both a new band and one that loves everything old.
by Nathan Kamal
