5 [LIVE REVIEW] Grails @ Doug Fir (PDX)

Live Review by New SRG Contributer Paul Lyon

Matt says:

I have known Paul since high school, but we never really talked too much back then. A couple years ago, a friend of mine took me to check out Paul's band at the time, a wicked crescendo-core outfit called Waves and Radiation. I dug 'em fierce. Paul and I got to talking over beers after the show and discovered we were both into the same kick ass music, that is, the kind of shit we cover here at SRG. Since we're taking SRG coverage to the next level, Paul is going to hit some Tacoma shows and kick science to y'all. He's got a musical radar I can vouch for, is a wicked bass player and also has an ambient project called Dilithium Pistol.

From the very start, it promised to be a good night. Portland had given us a beautiful, sunny warm day and by nightfall, the air sparked with energy. As we walked across Burnside Bridge heading east toward our terminus, the darkened water of the Columbia River swept slowly under us, the waves flickering like matches in a gentle breeze. The sidewalks were surprisingly empty save for a couple skateboarders, and more bicyclists passed by than cars. I wondered briefly if we were perhaps seen as outsiders by the people of this city of cities, trespassers only for our own whims and entertainment, or as they say, strangers in a strange land; but then, finally, we came upon it – our long‐awaited destination, and I knew that we were not mere strangers but puzzle pieces simply awaiting placement.

Built in 2004, the Doug Fir Lounge is gorgeous and debonair, focused around a 1950’s modernist theme. Composed primarily of pinewood walls, glass doorways and floor to ceiling mirrors, the moodily lit upstairs restaurant and bar is both quite swank and subtly kaleidoscopic. As we sit, highballs of Knob Creek in hand and Nina Simone playing through the stereo system, we quietly revel in the leisurely atmosphere. A short time after, we make our way downstairs to the venue where we are met with the same dark, candlelit air, though this time the atmosphere is not of relaxation, it is of anticipation for what is to soon come. As only luck can bring, tonight would be host to a most pleasant of surprises: witness to a great band that until they walked onstage I had never seen nor heard.


Tu Fawning is such a band, and for thirty minutes we are whisked away to a land of swirling texture, each song better than the last and the only disappointment their wave goodbye. Presumably from Portland, Tu Fawning have a remarkable sense of mood; each instrument’s notes bring tension, each voice’s harmonies bring release. As the band played, we felt one with their message, though we couldn’t know what the lyrics quite exactly were.

Grails is a rare band. Typically, to be rare, this is to mean a lack of presence or perhaps to present a sort of sparseness. Neither applies to this band, and neither would apply to their presentation at the Doug Fir Lounge. Their music is to bedefined only in feelings, patterns, depths; one might say their albums are composed of a sort of storytelling, unfolding slowly and in a vague, uneasy and yet beautiful way. Rare is a word to be used here to describe that which cannot be attained without struggle and a calling of spirit; a sense of achieving a higher sense of being. On this night, in anticipation of a new album, Grails were all of this, performing new songs with new definitions of what we call music.

The most surprising aspect of their show I found was a relative non‐reliance of exotic instruments to achieve their sound. Granted, portions were sampled, but I found nothing out of the ordinary onstage. In fact, most of the equipment was fairlygeneric and easy to come by for any musician. This, then, is the true meaning of music; it is best expressed through the mind and body, not gadgetry. As a result, tonight’s show would be refined even further, and we were all the better for it. Each song was played with this in mind and I felt, finally, the key to Grails’ music: within simplicity there is quiet complexity and within magic there is merely hushed clarity.

At some point we stopped paying attention to the notes and the rhythms the songs merged and the stage became a setting for something more – something imagined only in smoky dreams and layered with hidden meanings, hidden realities. Of course, for the musicians, they were still only men sweating it out, lingering along the edge of precision, looking down into the pit that is chaos.