Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Today's Portland bands #2
The Beauty, another neat Portland band that uploaded today, couldn't really come from a more distant part of the Portland scene than Agents of Future without being from Seattle. On their Soundclick page, they describe themselves as the "house band" at Voodoo Doughnut, the crazy all-night doughnut shop in downtown Portland, which used to sell a Nyquil-filled doughnut before they got in trouble with the FDA. Shows there take place on the roof of the bathroom, about ten feet above whatever crowd has managed to squeeze into the tiny shop's very limited standing room.
The Beauty's music is like a combination of TV on the Radio's indie soul with Nine Inch Nails' industrial crunch. The song they uploaded, Weight in Gold, combines a distorted didgy beat that's often punctuated with shrill beeps and shreiks with harmonized vocals that range from sweetly pretty to gritty and throaty. It's a compelling mix:
