Musee Mecanique
June 6th, 2009
at the Beat Kitchen

by Justin Valmassoi

I know that many of you picture the job of an online music/lifestyle publication reporter to be full of cocaine and bottle service, designer handbags and custom sneakers. You picture us using some C-list celebrity’s mink stole as a sex rag before crawling out the bathroom window to hit the afterparty, or maybe waking up in Minneapolis with the Bat For Lashes girl in a greenhouse, under a southwestern themed blanket with feathers in our hair, and yeah, these things happen all the time. What you might not realize is that there is an equal and opposite amount of time where we have to nurse the inevitable hangover that a night or three of pill popping and illicit drag racing will inevitably produce. There are also times where we just get sent to the Beat Kitchen to cover some Portland indie rock band we’ve never heard of and then go home.

It just so happens that last week I got sent to go see some Portland indie rock band I’ve never heard of at the Beat Kitchen that I actually now listen to when I’m nursing a hangover from nights of pill popping and illicit drag racing. The universe creates order from chaos.

... which brings us to Musee Mecanique.

Five-piece. All nice looking young fellows in earthtones and thrifted suits. All multi-instrumentalists, two of them trading vocal duties with a third on backups. An array of instrumentation that runs the gamut from accordions to synthesizers, pedal steel to singing saw. Unlike other acts who bring the entire kitchen and sink to the recording studio, Musee Mecanique are firmly rooted in the soft, folkish soil of their hometown. There is no “rocking out” with these dapper young gentlemen, just a painstaking attention to detail as they build shifting walls of melody to back their nearly whispered vocals. I spent the fist twenty minutes of their set seriously questioning whether or not soft, earnest indie rock had any place in 2009’s musical topography. Post- Postal Service and Death Cab, post-Decemberists, post- Portland soft-rock explosion, does anyone listen to this stuff anymore? I think the nation as a whole suffered collective burnout, and our response has been to embrace almost anything “noise” related or “danceable” while dressing like idiots. Sometimes you just swing the pendulum too far. I have faith we’ll come back to the middle soon.

Helping to bring us there is Musee Mecanique. They make a compelling case for maybe putting down the neon headband for a moment and recalling fondly 2004’s more subdued popular aural landscape. While it’s true that neither of the band’s three vocalists particularly stand out, their juggling of duties and occasional harmonizing do help keep it from getting stale, and in a band so enamored of the full range of instrumentation at their disposal, the vocals/lyrics are more or less another layer rather than the focal point. Watching them onstage is engaging, as they shuffle from position to position, pulling ever more instruments out of concealed nooks and crannies. Their seamless blend of electronic flourishes and organic instrumentation is impressive, and it’s entertaining to try to figure out who is making what noise with what device. Their stage banter is minimal and shy. It’s as though there’s something in the Portland water supply that makes its residents born wallflowers and accordion kids. Nevertheless, for those of us in attendance the band did a very impressive job of bringing to life their latest record, Hold This Ghost, recently released on the little known Frog Stand label.

The record itself is worth picking up, both as an example of what happens when Ennio Morricone meets Death Cab and to stand as testament to the Northwest’s ability to wring something fresh from the same old indie-folk trough. Its ten songs filter the genre through a curtain of movie score moodiness and sepia-toned distance, blending acoustic fingerpicks with glockenspiel and synth tones or wrapping the story of the Wright Brothers’ initial flight in singing saw and valium. On record, singers Micah Rawbin and Sean Ogilvie distinguish themselves slightly more than on stage, but it is definitely the music, all mood and shifting tone, that steals the show.

Their experimental approach to folk more than makes Musee Mecanique worth your dollar, and they seem like really nice kids. They seem like the type of talented multi-instrumentalists that would bail you out of jail when you get busted fleeing an overdose at some Life During Wartime set, and Hold This Ghost would make an excellent calmative backdrop for your next stretch of house arrest or detox.