Girlgoyle and the Coyote in the Living Room

Kt Neely strips the music down to its bones, and Portland isn't ready for the wreckage.

Mississippi Studios looms. It is, objectively, a weird sort of nothing when examined on paper: a nondescript building, a relatively small room by most measures, and a surprisingly unassuming venue in an otherwise bustling area of Portland. If you're not a local, you'd be hard-pressed to know about it. But I have always loved it for the things it does well and for the things it does not profess to be. It is a place of music, born out of a former place of worship, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the one is essentially the same as the other.

I step out of my car, grab my camera, my pen and pad of paper, and I hike past the neighborhood houses to the lights of Mississippi--parking is notoriously a bitch on the avenue proper. I gave up years ago trying to find a legally viable slot near the door, choosing instead to wander a few blocks into the residential gloom where I can abandon the vehicle in peace. Walking, even in the rain, is a sort of cleansing. One must be clear-headed for a night of worship, after all.

The doorman checks my ID. He barely pays any attention to the plastic, however. I've got a beard that's nearly two feet long, a tangled thicket of gray falling into white. If I'm not over twenty-one, then I clearly have some rare, accelerated medical condition that warrants letting me in out of sheer pity. He smiles and nods, waving me through the checkpoint. We recognize each other; I’ve been here half a dozen times in the last month to photograph and report on the madness within these walls.

"Good to see you again," he says, and I think he means it. I nod, mutter a small pseudo benediction, and walk inside.

The venue, as you enter, is immediately to the left through a doorway, with a long, inviting bar to the right. I step through and tell the person working the door that I'm on the guest list. They thumb down the page, frowning like a bureaucrat until they find my name, stamp my hand, slap a "Photographer" wristband on my wrist, and tell me not to do anything stupid. It is a command I intend to ignore, but I smile anyway. I am released into the belly of Mississippi Studios.

But before I wander to scope for the perfect angle, the just-right lighting--before I attach the lens and slide in a card to save every blessed photo I take--I go to the bar and order an Old Fashioned. A sophisticated drink for an unsophisticated time. It is necessary fuel for mingling. And mingle I do.

I wander and I talk to the other patrons. I ask them which band they're here to see, what their favorite song is, how many times they've seen the act live. There's always a volatile mix of longtime, hardcore fans, and the newly born neophytes who fell in love with a single song and came running the first time the band rolled into town. They tell stories of the first time they heard a song, about the time they pulled off the road and listened to the lyrics and burst into tears; about the time they felt a guitar chord vibrate in their bones and shiver their spine; about the way a band pulled at some string of hurt within them and left them yearning for more understanding from a stranger.

Soon, the house lights lower, the ambient noise dies a sudden death, and the band I'm here to see takes the stage: Girlgoyle. Though, if I'm honest, "band" is a loose term tonight. It is just the lead singer, Kt Neely. She's playing solo. She once told me that she and her band have such odd and hectic schedules that "getting together is kind of a nightmare."

So here we are. Just her. But seeing her play solo is worth the price of admission and, I can't stress this enough, it is absolutely mind-blowing. It is a cerebral detonation.

She stands there, framed by the velvet darkness and the lit decorations of the venue, a solitary figure against the machinery of a noisy bar. There is no drum kit to hide behind, no bass player to shake the floorboards--just Neely, a guitar, and a microphone that is about to catch some very heavy thoughts.

Her voice carries with a kind of insistence that I came to appreciate the first time I saw her play at Turn, Turn, Turn many months ago. It has real power to it, a voltage that lends well to lyrics that are at once lovely and devastating. I'm about to show my age here, but my brain wants to compare her to a weird mix of Lisa Loeb and Mazzy Star--a dash of delicate, ethereal, dreamy, and a sudden, savage gut-punch. It is the sound of a siren who has seen the ship crash on the rocks and decided to write a melody about the wreckage.

She launches into "Coyote," my personal favorite. She explains the origin of the song with a dry, almost stoic humor that catches the room off guard. It’s about her dog. She thought the poor beast was about to die--a tragic, domestic ending. Except, the creature lived on for years afterward. And, in a twist that defies all biological logic and municipal zoning laws, it turned out to be a coyote. Not a dog. A wild scavenger living in the house, masquerading as a pet, eating kibble and presumably laughing at the concept of domestication.

Did I mention she's a natural storyteller? The crowd ripples with laughter, but the moment she strikes the strings, the laughter dies in our throats. The song is a haunting thing. It’s about knowing a loss that is coming and about the weird, wild things we invite into our lives. It floats through the air, heavy and thick like cigar smoke.

Between songs, Kt playing solo has such a soft, shy disposition. It is the antithesis of a rock star ego. There is no strutting, no demand for applause. "You all sure are quiet," she comments at one point while tuning her guitar, the silence in the room stretching out like a tightrope. We all laugh.

And it's true, we are quiet. We are in a sort of hypnotic trance. We are paralyzed. We’re listening intently, afraid that if we breathe too loud, we might break the spell and the whole architecture of the thing will come crashing down around our ears. We're like a Sunday school class of recovering sinners ready to receive our lesson.

There is a distinct tension in watching a solo performance, and I only just noticed it this night. When a full band plays, you can drift; you can watch the drummer sweat, you can look at the bassist’s shoes. But with Girlgoyle tonight, there is nowhere to hide. Neely commands the eye. She is channeling something raw, stripping the songs down to their skeletal structure. It feels like a concert and a confession we aren't sure we're qualified to hear.

Kt moves through the Girlgoyle catalog, but stripped of the full-band fulfilment, the songs take on a sharper edge. The lyrics bite a little harder. There is a track--I miss the name because I am too busy trying to recalibrate my own emotional state--that sounds like a lullaby for the end of the world. It is the sound of electricity humming through a wire just before it snaps.

I look around the room. The bartender has stopped wiping glasses. The couple next to me, who had been whispering frantically about real estate prices ten minutes ago, are now frozen, eyes locked on the stage. This is the power of the thing. This is why we drag ourselves out into the rain, why we fight for parking, why we suffer the indignity of wristbands and slightly-too-expensive drinks.

Neely finishes the set with a strum that hangs in the air, vibrating against the walls. She smiles, that shy, almost apologetic smile again, as if she hasn't just reached into our chests and rearranged the furniture.

"Thank you," she says.

The applause is delayed--a beat of stunned silence--and then it erupts. It is genuine, loud, and thankful. We have been taken somewhere. We have survived the coyote in the living room.

And sure, we're here to see the next band, too. The night is young, and the whiskey is still working. But holy shit, nobody wants this to end. There is a collective feeling in the room, a sense that we have witnessed something pure in a city that is increasingly cluttered with noise. I drain my glass, the ice clinking against the bottom like a final bell. I need another drink. I need to process the poetry. But mostly, I just want to listen a little longer.

I find Kt near the merch booth later. She mentioned during her set that she'd just returned from a trip to Japan, so we trade notes about the place, and about the things that can change us in a way we don't expect. I don't say it at the time, but music is that way. Art is that way. Writing and photography are that way, too. The things we pull into our lives change us; they bend us and mold us in ways we never really understand at the time.

I encourage you, dear reader: the next time you're in Portland, go see Girlgoyle play if you can. Listen to the music on Bandcamp if you can't. And in the meantime, keep on supporting local music.