Day one has come to an end at PDX Pop Now!, with scores of rad bands being introduced to a hungry listenership. Friday night’s lineup included dallops of dance, a few minutes of metal with Witch Mountain, and current leader in the running for Best Band of the festival, AndAndAnd.
This wily five-piece thumped oddly new-wave progressions, Television-like, into danceable indie-rock inertia. The crowd inside Branx were teeming, but did little to match the energy coming from the spectacle in front of them. Armed with your standard two guitarists, bassist, singer and an incredible drummer, AndAndAnd (pictured above) have unveiled a simplistic, though no less practical mode for their craft. If you play it, they will come. Luckily "it" is a revival-busting thrust of spastic rock ‘n’ roll that left me grinning like a Cheshire.
Tu Fawning commanded the outside stage at 11:35 p.m., the decibels of the audio peaking at a level a little south of inviting (goddamn noise laws, goddamn PO-lice). But Tu Fawning’s Shamanistic shivers need not the bump of the mains to endear them to an audience. Vocalist/guitarist Corrina Repp morphed and fluttered before our eyes, swaying with invisible suitors to the trance of Joe Haege’s mystical polyrhythms and puckish guitar.
However, to save energy for today’s lineup – one that features O Bruxo at 3:25, Wampire at 8:20 and Hockey at 12:25 a.m. – we decided to saunter home abreast the spokes, frames and oily gears of our bicycles; visions of pop ‘n’ roll dancing in our heads. Will we see you there today?
Stay tuned for additional coverage, insight, thoughts, poop, etc. at the Deli Portland!
– Ryan J. Prado