Hibou Takes Flight
Girlgoyle and The Myriads come along, too.
The man at the security station in Mississippi Studios gives me the kind of look that only a seasoned Portland gatekeeper can properly execute. It's a complex cocktail of mild suspicion, weary acceptance, and a flicker of genuine curiosity. I am, I must admit, a walking contradiction. The long, unkempt beard screams "street philosopher" or "unsuccessful wizard," while the Mohawk, now too long to maintain its defiant verticality, flops over like a wilted fern. Add to this the mildly-thick round glasses that seem borrowed from a 1960s tax auditor and a canary-yellow camera bag strained to the breaking point with Japanese glass and cameras and God knows what else, and you have a man who could be here to document the scene, or possibly to panhandle for beer money. In Portland, the line between the two is blessedly, beautifully thin.
I offer a smile that's probably more of a grimace as he scans the guest list for the third time. My name, of course, is a ghost, an apparition that failed to materialize on the sacred scroll. "Sorry, man," he says, and he actually sounds it. This isn't New York. There's no bouncer's glee in his denial. He's just a guy doing a job, and my particular brand of chaos is a minor snag in the otherwise smooth flow of humanity trickling into this converted house of worship. He gets on his radio, his voice a low hum against the growing buzz of the crowd.
I step aside, a momentary eddy in the current, and watch the ticket-holders file in. They are the lifeblood, the true believers who have laid their fifteen or twenty dollars on the altar of sound. They are a magnificent cross-section of the city's tribes: fresh-faced college kids in meticulously curated thrift-store flannel, a couple of graying punks who probably saw Black Flag at the Satyricon, a smattering of tech workers looking to wash the sterile glow of their laptop screens from their retinas with some pure, unadulterated noise. This is the congregation, and they are ready for the sermon.
Suddenly, a crackle from the radio, a disembodied voice from the ether of management, and I am granted absolution. A tiny paper wristband is snapped onto my arm, a flimsy passport to the sonic territory beyond the ropes. Freedom.
I ascend to the balcony, the classic first move of the photographer. The view is a sharp, celestial angle, looking down upon the stage like a disappointed god. It's no good. You can't capture the sweat and the feedback from the heavens. The soul of the thing is down there, in the muck and the mire, so I descend back into the human soup, planting myself near the front just as the first band is plugging in.
"That's a hell of a camera," a voice booms. I turn to see a man who looks like he was carved from a single, massive piece of Pacific Northwest lumber. He's tall, ruddy-faced, maybe sixty, with an easy grin that suggests a life lived with a certain casual disregard for consequences.
"We'll see if I can manage any decent photos," I reply, checking my battery levels out of nervous habit. "You here for Hibou?"
"Couldn't tell you," he laughs, a hearty, genuine sound. "I was walking by, heard the noise from inside, decided to stop and buy a ticket. Seemed like the right thing to do."
And in that moment, the entire magnificent, infuriating, beautiful ethos of this city clicks into place in my mind. This is the spirit. Not the curated weirdness of a TV show, but the spontaneous, un-ironic decision to follow a sound into a dark room on a Monday night just because it feels right. It reminds me of a time, fifteen years ago, playing bass in some godforsaken dive on the Southeast side. I'd run out into the street mid-song, tethered by a forty-foot cable, a lunatic evangelist trying to reel people in off the sidewalk. And it worked. Because in Portland, when a man with a bass guitar asks you to come listen to his band, you do it. It's part of the social contract.
"Well, you're in for a treat," I tell the big man, and I mean it. I wander off, partially to escape small talk, but also to find my angle.
The first band kicks in: Girlgoyle. This is the project of musician Kt Neely, and the sound that spills from the stage is a perfect slice of Portland. It's not the furious garage rock I might have expected, but something more spectral, a sound we might hand-wave away as "shoegaze" or "ghostwave", but it supersedes the trappings of its labels. It hangs in the air like fog rolling off the Willamette. The guitars chime with a clean, haunting reverb, and Neely's voice cuts through the haze with a cool, detached, melancholic yearning. They haven't yet fallen for the cynical stage banter or the rock-star poses; instead, they are utterly consumed by the vulnerable and beautiful noise they are creating. It's a glorious, gauzy soundscape. Sure, the blue light from a dozen phones in the front row paints the faces of the terminally distracted, a generation intent on proving they were here rather than simply being here. But they showed up. They are a field of tiny digital lighthouses, and maybe this is just the new form of applause. The final song ends on a wave of feedback, and the band just smiles, caught in their moment. They are alive, we are alive, and the ghostly presence fills the room. It's more than enough.
Next comes a band called Myriads, the brainchild of songwriter Maria DeHart. The term "dream pop" gets thrown around a lot these days, but this is the genuine article, imbued with a healthy dose of Pacific Northwest melancholy and folk honesty. This isn't an assault; it's an invitation. They are architects of an intricate sadness, building delicate structures from shimmering, sometimes overdriven guitars and lyrics that speak of the long, gray seasons of the heart. The rhythm section lays down a groove that is both hypnotic and insistent, a steady heartbeat beneath the layers of introspective sound. It's not easy listening; it's emotional listening. A few tourists--you can always spot them in a crowd--in the back head for another PBR, but the Portland crowd leans in, their faces etched with a familiar concentration. They are here for this. They are willing to drift with the band into these deep waters of sound and feeling, to trust that the journey into the beautiful gloom is its own reward.
It was about halfway through Myriads' set when I began arguing with my camera. There was a ghost in the machine, a demon in the lens I couldn't exorcise. I was hunched over my Nikon, twisting dials in a frantic, sweaty panic--a savage battle against the immutable laws of light and time. Some doomed quest for the perfect frame, the one pristine shot that would make sense of this whole goddamn circus of life. You wrestle the voodoo of f-stops and shutter speeds, you jack the ISO until the grain looks like angry sand, but you know, you know deep in your gut, that the whole damned game is rigged for "good enough." You're just a crooked gambler looking for one clean pull of the shutter. And in the middle of this private vortex of technical madness, a voice cut through the gloom, a presence materializing out of the swirling fog of stale beer and camera-related desperation.
I wrenched my eyes from the viewfinder and there she was, a specter in the flesh. It was Kt, the high priestess of Girlgoyle, the siren with the microphone who had just spent an hour ripping the soul out of the stage. She gave a nod, a flicker of a smile. "Thanks for being here," she said, the words barely audible over the last howling feedback of the Myriads still on stage. Then she gestured with her chin toward the sonic chaos erupting, her voice dropping into a register of pure, uncut reverence. "I'm so lucky to play with these bands," she said, nodding at the glorious noise of Myriads. "They're so good." And in that moment, the whole miserable equation of apertures and shutter speeds dissolved into meaninglessness. Here it was. The savage heart of the matter. The truth wasn't in the camera--it was right here in the goddamn air.
As Myriads comes off the stage, there is a chant for "One. More. Song!" from the crowd, but they are were left disappointed. The show must roll on. No encores for the opener, that's the unspoken rule of playing a set.
The lights drop one more time, the projector fires up, and a wave of reverb washes over the room. Hibou. Peter Michel and his band glide onto the stage and launch into a set that is nothing short of a baptism. The music is a shimmering, shoegaze masterpiece, a wall of sound that is simultaneously powerful and delicate. It's the sound of a late-night drive down a rain-slicked highway, the blur of city lights seen through a hazy dream.
The crowd transforms. The phones, for the most part, go down. People close their eyes. They sway, not as individuals, but as a single, collective organism, moving with the tide of the music. The big man I'd met earlier is standing near me, a blissful, slightly goofy look on his face, his head nodding in perfect time. He found what he was looking for. We all did. This is the payoff, the moment of pure, unadulterated transcendence that we all came here chasing. I raise my camera, and though it feels almost like a sacrilege to interrupt the moment with the clatter of a shutter, I take a few shots anyway. I am trapped forever between trying to capture the ethereal glow of the stage lights, the rapturous expressions on the faces in the crowd, and wanting to enjoy the moment.
When the last, echoing note fades and the house lights snap on, the spell is broken, but the magic lingers. The room is buzzing with a palpable energy, the afterglow of a shared experience. I pack my gear, I chat with a few band members, I finish my drink; my soul strangely full and simultaneously empty.
Outside, the cool Mississippi Avenue air feels clean and sharp. The street is a living timeline of the city's history--a shiny new condo building standing next to a dive bar that's been there for fifty years, a high-end dispensary across from a record store. The city is changing, yes. It's always changing. But it's not dead. It's not a ghost. The spirit is still here, in the kid who will go home and start a band in his garage after seeing that first opening act, in the art-rockers pushing the boundaries of what a song can be, in the guy who wanders into a venue to follow a sound. The heart of this weird, beautiful city is still there.
And tonight, I was lucky enough to put my ear to its chest and hear it beating loud and clear.