Perfectly ragged
Blue Giant’s debut LP begins with a song about starting over, and that’s just what these Pacific Northwesterners have done. Comprised of members from a smattering of Portland bands and anchored by Viva Voce’s Kevin and Anita Robinson, the new outfit’s hungry, impulsive olio of folk, rock and alt-country tangles up the sounds of its members’ pasts in a tumbleweed of strings, drawls and hollers. On the album’s more provincial moments, like the wistful “Target Heart,” soft whispers adorn raggedy acoustics like flecks of sunlight on a dusty barn floor; elsewhere, “Blue Sunshine” stomps and bucks its way through a holy mess of rowdy chords and harmonicas, and the equally fervent “Go On” presses forth with a militant vigor. It’s a turmoil of glorious noise.