Musicfest NW 2008

Austin has its SXSW and ACL Fest; New York has CMJ; Chicago has the Pitchfork Festival while Seattle and Bumbershoot remain hand-in-glove. Even as the music industry suffers through another in a long line of financially declining years, the list of noteworthy regional music events nevertheless goes on and on with nary an end in sight.

The former NXNW (now known as Musicfest NW, eight years beyond its acrimonious break with its SXSW partners) has become one of fall’s signature rallying points for the indie-rock nation, and for the lil’-burg-that-could that is Portland, Ore., it remains our town’s national stake in the ground and the magnet that draws acts as stylistically disparate as Mogwai, Nada Surf, Del the Funky Homosapien, TV on the Radio, Flipper, Fleet Foxes and Les Savy Fav to our fair city (a total of 215 bands were booked into this year’s event, across 20 different venues) during MFNW’s four-day run.

Executive Director Trevor Solomon has constructed not only a durable, movable feast, he’s done so in such a way that is completely commensurate with Stumptown’s cynical, hipper-than-thou/hands-in-pockets stylistic aesthetic, featuring a healthy dose of local products mixed into a broth spilling over with exotic interests from beyond our wooded confines. What follows is a brief summary of highlights and leftovers from the long-weekend-that-was.

Without question the single best show I caught throughout MFNW was Vampire Weekend’s sold-out affair at the Crystal Ballroom Friday night. It’s obvious that constant touring has done this young quartet some measure of good; having witnessed their Portland debut the much-smaller Doug Fir Lounge back in March, they’ve come a long way since then, maintaining all the crackling energy that is their hallmark while adding to it a modicum of stagecraft, humor (“thank you to all the moshing hippies down front, who’ve somehow found a way to mix the aggression of one era with the peace of another”) and finesse that serves the band’s songs well.

Frontman Ezra Koenig—kind of a combination of Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame and a young David Byrne—seemed somewhat taken aback by the Beatlemania-like screaming down in front of the packed venue, saying during the encore that the band had literally played “every song we know, so now we’re going home.” For anyone convinced that Portland’s slack hipsters do little at local gigs besides order up another microbrew while tugging at the corners of their starter-kit mustaches, think again: this was a rowdy, rocking show, complete with dancing and singalongs almost completely out of character for your average Rose City gig.

The night before, local hero M. Ward put on a compelling display that highlighted why some consider him the best post-modern bluesman of the past decade. With a band that included members of Norfolk & Western and the Old Joe Clarks (sidekick Mike Coykendall having become almost a permanent presence in Ward’s stage act by now), Ward waded through a cross-section of songs from across his back catalog, whetting the appetite for whatever comes next from his/Coykeyndall’s respective attic home studios. Opener Calvin Johnson ran through a thoroughly bizarre (but typical) set of his outsider-music-for-kids, preaching primarily to the converted, many of whom had put on their regulation K Records t-shirts especially for the occasion.

Love as Laughter proved somewhat disappointing and lackluster; local indie-folk chanteuse Laura Gibson put on a quietly riveting display at Doug Fir that easily illustrated why she has become one of Portland’s most exciting young singer-songwriters; and Built to Spill (complete with violist) ran through the entirety of their epic 1997 release Perfect From Now On for a sweaty, packed crowd at the Wonder Ballroom. In hindsight, it’s clear that PFNO has become, to a certain degree, the indie generation’s Dark Side of the Moon, a touchstone that perfectly captures the emotional uncertainty of an era (titles such as “Untrustable,” “Randy Described Eternity” and “I Would Hurt a Fly” indicating frontman Doug Martsch’s uncomfortably distant relationship with the world around him at that moment in time) while making plenty of room for the considerable musical chops required just to play the songs involved. “Kicked It in the Sun,” to stretch the metaphor, then becomes the record’s “Breathe,” a minor-key magnum opus that exalts in the mere fact of being alive. An amazing and indelible highlight to a weekend otherwise full of the usual musical surprises MFNW seemingly always brings to the table.