As a new radio host eight years ago, when Portland three-piece Menomena came down to my station at the time for an interview, I learned a very important lesson: Just because a band or artist makes songs about heartbreak, regret, angst, that doesn’t mean they are heartbroken, regretful, or angsty to interact with. In fact, they likely won’t be, since they’re able to deal with or purge those feelings through their music. A few minutes into my interview with Danny, Justin and Brent, I put aside my notebook full of carefully crafted, What-Would-Terry-Gross-Ask questions and simply embraced our discussions of lactating males, “so…who likes potatoes,” and the band’s a capella rendition of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”*

In the intervening years, the band has also let their videos serve as a counterpoint to the emotion of their music, and this has continued through to Brent Knopf’s project Ramona Falls. Pitchfork just posted “Russia,” a follow-up to the first video from last year’s Intuit (which made my 2009 best-of list). It stars Matt Sheehy (who also joins the band for live shows) opposite a girl who I don’t know, though, she’s nearly the only part of the video I can’t place. (Fellow Portlanders will recognize scenes from First Thursday, Oaks Park, March Fourth Marching Band, Sam Barlow High School,  the Springwater Corridor and The Old Church, where Knopf makes a split-second cameo.) It’s directed by Cullen Hoback. Update: The girl is Emily Galash. Thanks Mercury.

Menomena are releasing their fourth album, Mines, July 27 on Barsuk.

mp3s:

Ramona Falls - Russia
Ramona Falls - I Say Fever
Matt Sheehy - Go Missing
Matt Sheehy - About Piano
Matt Sheehy - Lunatics (remixed by Brent Knopf)
Matt Sheehy - Lunatics (album version, via Local Cut)
Menomena - Wet and Rusting
Menomena - Pilgrim’s Progress (stream at Pitchfork)

*Note to self: Find that tape in that one shoebox.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 4/21, 12:00 It would seem that I have misunderestimated the affinity of Swedish synthophiles with stereotypically Scandinavian stereoptics for the Philips Philicordia GM753. It turns out that Andreas Dahlback, a frequent collaborator of Jonna Lee, is also an owner of the keyboard in question. I guess I’m a Philicordia Philistine.

This is a photo of him from his MySpace page:

You can see an identical blemish on his forehead to the one on the young man in an altered, transcendent state in the “b” video. And, of course, the organ:

Thanks to Hils, for directing me toward Dahlback in the comments section.

Regardless that the “who is” mystery is solved, I love the mythology they’ve created: A mysterious and beautiful creature (conceived by aliens? science? nature? magic) is born out of an ancient tree all covered in Earth-vernix, eventually found, bathed, covered in protective plastic, and later just an Elizabethan collar. When she sings, humans around her go into a trance-like euphoria, and plants become sentient.

And I’m still looking forward to the Junip EP.

This is the latest video, “o,” released a couple weeks back:

I’ll be publishing a new show soon!

———————————————
My original post:

Another member of the enigmatic project discovered?

I am a relative latecomer to the iamamiwhoami party, only having discovered the electronic music/viral video phenomenon earlier this month. If you’re just getting to the party now, I’ll catch you up.

In late 2009, this video appeared on YouTube, posted by an anonymous user by the name of iamamiwhoami.

In the five months since, seven similar videos have been posted, each time revealing slightly more of the mysterious young woman’s features, who is seemingly born of a tree or out of the Earth. The last two, titled simply “b” and “o” (rather than long number sequences separated by periods) are full-length songs, and show enough of the woman’s face, uncovered by tar-like makeup and relatively undistorted otherwise, for some to recognize her as Swedish singer/songwriter Jonna Lee.

The above video demonstrates pretty clearly that Jonna Lee is the singer for iamamiwhoami, but there are three men also shown in the seventh video, “b,” presumably the other musicians comprising the project. I believe I have determined the identity of one of them: Tobias Winterkorn.

Winterkorn is keyboardist for the Swedish band Junip, which is fronted by Jose Gonzales. The band are currently working on a follow-up to their 2005 debut EP, and have released a single on their website called Rope & Summit (email required). On the website’s splash page, we see one of Winterkorn’s vintage keyboards, a Philips Philicordia GM753--the same exact model as shown in “b.”

So, maybe it’s just coincidence. After all, Philips did mass-produce those Philicordias. And Sweden is a country, not a neighborhood, so it doesn’t prove anything, right? But, although there’s not much to go on in terms of facial features, we are shown each of the three men’s eyes.

Here’s one of them from “b”:

And here’s a closeup, taken four years ago by Flickr user ca6:

Same country? Check. Same keyboard? Check. Same eyes? Check.

Now, who are the other two?

Watch iamamiwhoami’s “b”

Listen to Junip’s “Rope & Summit” (email required for download)

Watch Jonna Lee’s “My High”

So, this makes, like, four videos now? They just keep putting them out. How many more can one band make?


They Might Be Giants - The Mesopotamians

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I’m coming to Portland September 7-10 for MusicFest NW, one of my favorite times of all the year! It’s like Christmas, but most of the songs are newer.

This Friday and next Friday, I’ll be playing music by bands playing at the festival. You can check out the roster for yourself at musicfestnw.com.

Here’s a commercial they did for it, unapologetically naming and shaming the Michael Bolton of the new millenium:

If you are as ardent a fan as I am of They Might Be Giants, you’ll have seen this video already. If not, it’s only been out a few weeks, so go ahead and give it a view:

The band will be playing in Portland on September 27 (buy tickets).

So, I’ve been sick of the name “Post Modern Rock Show” for a long time now (more on why on another post later), and I decided that after my fifth year anniversary, it was time to do something about it.

This here is the new site! What do you think? I designed the old one over three years ago, and it was outdated and the show was outgrowing it. This site is powered by WordPress, which means that you, yes you can leave comments! And it also means that (hopefully) there’ll be no glitches with the podcast feed.

You can subscribe to the podcast using the new url: http://www.thatsoundradio.com/?feed=podcast. If you’re not sure about how to do that, read this, or I’ll be posting a video on here soon explaining how to do it. (It’s actually really easy.)

So, let me know what you think! Let’s test those comments and make sure they work! I’ll be adding more features and content here in the coming days and weeks.

Video: Devo - Post Post-Modern Man