The Saturday Night Cure for a Sick Republic

Staring Down the National Nightmare with an Old Fashioned and a Necessary Dose of Portland's Finest Noise Merchants

It’s a party on the dance floor. Literally.

There's a special kind of madness that thrives in the belly of a working kitchen or bar. You have to understand this to understand anything. You'll find the line cooks, those unsung heroes of the gut-rot economy, gulping water from quart containers, snatching a bite of a dinner they attempted to choke down an hour ago before being swallowed by the next food rush, or skulking outside for a quiet moment with a cigarette, or three. A non-stop ballet of desperation.

I sit at a table across from the main maelstrom of the bar while I wait for the signal to plunge into Mississippi Studios. They say J. Graves and Bijoux Cone are living up to their Portland reputations here tonight. A hell of a thing to live up to, if I'm honest. But for now, I watch the grim machinery of the service industry: french fries and burgers slung like ammunition while the bartenders pour drinks with the precision of field medics.

Across this chaos, my phone flashes with some fever-dream dispatch from the lizard-brain of the nation: the President has decided to bully Portland, along with a few other unfortunate US cities. It's his pathetic, misguided attempt at posturing; a man's undulated screaming into a void that he matters and that he's a big boy. And in the face of that high-level insanity, I am reminded that life, the real thing, continues. It moves and it sways regardless of the decrees from madmen and dogs.

There's a flash of guilt that comes across my brain, and I am momentarily taken aback. Who am I to be sitting in this bar, waiting to see a show, while the world is holding its breath to see if we all survive? I steady myself for a moment, a memory flashes across my brain—as if in answer to my anxiety—and I momentarily see the blue-black cover of a book I once read: “Endurance”. That doomed vessel in the Antarctic ice with 27 souls aboard. What were they doing while awaiting a rescue that might never come? What were they doing while the world had fallen into madness, into World War I, and they were left alone and frightened and starving on the ice?

They put on plays. They sang. They celebrated birthdays. And the bastards survived.

Though we may be stuck on the ice, we can still listen to our favorite bands. We can still watch plays. Community is the antithesis to fascism. This is the whole goddamn point. The real action is here, in rooms thick with sweat and anticipation.

Not in the hollow pronouncements of some tin-pot despot.

But I digress.

A message arrives on my phone from Bijoux: the list is good. I grab my cocktail--an Old Fashioned, a civilized drink for an uncivilized time--and haul the tools of the trade into the next room. Camera, notepad, pen, the usual gear. Security, a man with the bored eyes of a palace guard, looks me over and still manages to find my name on the guest list. I make my way to the right of the stage to prepare for the coming madness, and I sigh in relief. I am always just slightly happier to know I've made it into the venue without trouble.

The room plunges into boozy darkness. First up to the sacrificial altar: J. Graves. From the opening slash of guitar, it's clear this is the raw and necessary stuff. Dance-punk with its teeth gritted, a sound of frenetic agony, a blend of low, growling garage rock and pure passion. The energy ratchets up immediately, the work of a band with a tight, almost telepathic connection.

At the heart of the insanity is Jessa Graves, a woman who performs with the absolute intensity of a 3am fistfight. Her voice is a calculated slap across the face, shifting from a gritty, sloe-eyed backhand to a soaring, disarming falsetto without losing any oomph in the process. The songs are a chaotic seesaw, swaying wildly from punch to melody; it honestly feels like an abusive relationship, where each explosive outburst is replaced by quiet subtlety to lull you back in. Utter violence and retched reconciliation. All this savagery is anchored by the drumming of Aaron MacDonald, who smiles casually as I snap his picture, all the while hammering away like a man without a care in the world.

Fucking glorious.

J. Graves creates a wall of sound that still somehow leaves space for tension, a pressure cooker of post-punk energy that commands movement. Jessa owns the stage, she is everywhere, nowhere, a caged animal released from its shackles. Her face is for a moment haunted and anguished, the next enraged and unhinged, and the very next it is joyful and smiling. This isn't just music; it's a possession. It feels like barely contained despair, a tumult of anthems about the mundane and catastrophic atrocities of life. This is music born from a riot grrrl spirit, from the anger of Eve passed down through her sisters and daughters. By the time the set concludes, the room is thick with a shared catharsis. This is a band that doesn't just play music--they bleed it.

Bijoux in all her glory.

Then comes the baptism. The psychic whiplash is immense. The stage lights shift, and the air, still crackling with punk residue, fills with the dreamy melodies of Bijoux Cone. A primal scream replaced by a seductive whisper. The sound is a lush, soulful exploration wrapped in the glittering fabric of disco-esque synth-pop. A demented cocktail of Bowie and Tears for Fears that speaks directly to this Millennial heart.

The performance is a masterclass in atmosphere--twinkling melodies, fog machines, and seductive vocals that pull the audience into a different kind of trance. Where J. Graves was a physical exorcism, Bijoux Cone is a spiritual immersion. A journey through soundscapes where each song explores the complexities of identity. The crowd, once a churning mass, is now a swaying, hypnotic sea. This is music as a celebration, a vibrant and unapologetic embrace of queer and transgender perspectives, transforming the room into a space of neon-lit introspection and communal joy. A raw, furious energy followed by a soulful, glittering calm--two sides of the same wild heart.

And then you look out into the crowd, and you get a psychic mainline of pure, uncut human emotion. In the shimmering, hazy glow, you see them--these poor, beautiful "dolls"--clutching at each other. They're embracing, kissing, some of them are openly weeping into the synth wash. You realize you're not just watching a concert--you're witnessing a series of tiny, desperate truces in the grinding war against loneliness. Each one of these souls is a whole goddamn universe of experience crammed into a single body on this speck of dust hurtling through the black. Each one came to this tiny venue in this tiny-big city for one reason: to feel like they belong somewhere. And for a few precious, electric moments, they do. Right here. This is their foxhole.

Just when the atmosphere is so thick with feeling you could cut it with a knife, the whole scene shifts again on its axis. Bijoux, this high priestess of the neon confessional, slips off her clothes and slips off the stage like some kind of spectral apparition. She doesn't just step down; she descends. And then, in a move of pure, beautiful insanity, she lies down on the dance floor--the grimy, beer-soaked, sacred ground--and keeps singing, her voice curling up towards the rafters from the very heart of the crowd. The barrier is gone. The illusion is shattered.

The mood doesn't just shift; it ruptures. The gentle, hypnotic swaying of the crowd erupts into a roar of pure, animal joy. The spell is broken, but only to be replaced by something wilder, more real. They cheer for the music, for this person, for the sheer, unadulterated nerve of it all. The experience snaps into focus. It is no longer a performance to be passively consumed but a living beast. For a moment, we are all on the floor with her, a single organism of pure defiance. Each of us howling our joy into the darkness.

When the lights come up, the reverie is broken. We blink, cast out and back into the world. I leave the venue, thanking the band members of each band for letting me come watch their performances. I step into the chilly night air, a sign that Autumn is finally clawing its way in. That chill brings me back to the ice, back to my thoughts about Endurance.

They made their own light in the crushing darkness. And tonight that’s exactly what happened.

The screaming catharsis of J. Graves, the shimmering joy of Bijoux Cone--this is more than entertainment. It's forging a bond. It's a bulwark against the madness. The edicts from on high, the posturing of lunatics--it all feels distant and hollow out here. We might be on the ice for a long, long time.

But I pull my collar up against the wind, and I know we're not yet broken. We have this. We have the music. And we will keep howling back at the void.