Værsgo, Arya (PDX Pop Now! I)

I’m having a hard time remembering all the bands I saw at PDX Pop Now! and I keep wanting to add Mogwai to the list. I could hear Cower eleven blocks away (yes I counted) and I kept wishing for my earplugs with the indoor bands, but no one, thankfully, was that loud.

(Kind of PS -- Mogwai will actually play in Portland soon -- 3. September at the Roseland Theatre. It’s part of MusicFest NW, another Portland festival which, unfortunately, is neither free nor all-ages.)

This was my first year at the now five-year-old festival, and my favorite set of the weekend -- I’ll be honest -- is one that I nearly didn’t see. But more of that later. Now, for the sake of maintaining my sanity, I’ll go in chronological order.

I got to the festival late. At six o’clock, when the music started, I was wrapping up Live Friday, for which I’d supervised sound. Normally I love doing sound for Live Friday, but that week, I didn’t want to be there. However. Don’t Hurt Miles, one of the most energetic bands I’ve ever seen – they’re clearly having a fantastic time -- played, and that was a good thing. I remember being in kind of a dismal/exhausted mood earlier, and they definitely put me in the mood for listening to and enjoying music.

I arrived at Rotture, where the festival was held this year, in time for the last few songs of Love Menu’s opening set. I was disappointed not to have seen the whole thing, but not too disappointed, having just seen them the night before at the Top Down Festival. (Am I starting to sound like a huge scenester right now? I’m totally not a scenester.) However, as I later told several people, it was far more enjoyable the second night, without the band being pretty much drowned out by an enormous ventilation fan going off all the time. (The Top Down Festival, awesomely, takes place on top of a hotel, which, unfortunately, needs to be air conditioned.) I wish I’d gotten to hear more of it.

After Love Menu, the Rainy States played. Amazingly, it was only the second time I’d seen them, though it feels like it’s been far more than that. As before (here I want to type as always) Ben was very fun to watch; Betsy and the two Kevins were less visually entertaining but aurally very good as well.

I seem to have several misconceptions about the Rainy States. Another one is that they are a quiet band. I don’t know what would ever have caused me to believe this, or why I have not, by this point, gotten used to the fact that they are not really a quiet band, but every time one of their songs starts, I’m surprised by how loud it is. I have nothing against being loud, it just wasn’t what I expected. But I’m an idiot, and their set was great.

After that, I spent some time outside, waiting for a rap duo-ish (which, in reviews I read later, was proclaimed excellent) to finish so that the music would rotate to the outside stage.

Tu Fawning opened the outside stage. They were pretty good, although the mix was kind of off. (I’m sorry; I’m a sound tech; I have to.) Nothing the band could have done about that, though.

In a rather strange choice of scheduling, Tu Fawning was followed by Guidance Counselor. I’d seen Guidance Counselor a few weeks before, when he played Live Friday, so I had an idea of what to expect: somewhat insane electro-rock, the kind that you dance to. Surprisingly, even though there were kids to dance to it at the pop fest -- and plenty of them did -- I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the previous set in the tiny, drab (I was going to say sterile but quickly realized that would definitely be the wrong word) basement lobby of the radio station. This is not to say it was bad. I just thought it could have been better.

Maybe it was my mood, though, because I felt essentially the same way about Dykeritz. Several months earlier, they played at the Modern Age, with a setup that included three people and hundreds and hundreds of machines. By the time of their pop fest set, band membership seemed to have swelled to nearly ten, and the majority of the keyboards and other electronic music machines were nowhere in sight. (To be fair, I couldn’t really see the stage most of the time.) Even the sound was different; without the name, I would have easily mistaken them for another band.

I think I went home after that -- it was getting insanely crowded already, and when the crowd started flowing back inside for Panther, the door counters were out -- electing not to stay and be smashed against a wall for three hours in the hopes of seeing Nick Jaina. Saw him Sunday, though. Kind of...