winter warmth : a q/a with memoryhouse’s with evan abeele

As composer Evan Abeele and vocalist Denise Nouvion prepared their debut album for release on the last Tuesday of February, the comparisons to Beach House continued to pour in.

It's an apt description, but on The Slideshow Effect, Ontario's Memoryhouse pulled inspiration from some past classics (Emmylou Harris, Dusty Springfield, Fleetwood Mac) dropping the reverbed sound of previous recordings (from 2010's The Years) and putting Nouvion's beautifully delicate vocals at the forefront, kissing you before Abeele's compositions float forward to make the contact of a full embrace. The warmth is then multiplied by the presence of a smidgen of Canadian country as several of the 10 tracks feature the delicate twang of a pedal steel.

And although Nouvion may audibly lead on the Sub Pop-released record, Abeele has gained more confidence in his production (with the help of friend, collaborator and occasional Memoryhouse bassist Barzin Hassani Rad), pushing his compositions to include guitars, piano, Rhodes, bass, vibraphone, Hammond, and Juno keys on The Slideshow Effect—which you can watch in its entirety below (images provided by Nouvion).

Approaching the tail end of a 15-date North American, with a European tour to follow, Memoryhouse's Evan Abeele answered a few questions for OMN via email in advance of their Sunday, March 11th show at Bunk Bar with PDX via Ft. Lauderdale's Arrange (aka the 19-year-old Malcom Lacey).

Tell me how the title of your new album, The Slideshow Effect, and even your band name, Memoryhouse, aptly describe the concept behind your debut album.

I think the idea we wanted to explore on our album was that it's not what your remember, but how you remember. All of those loose, messy narrative threads that shape your life based on how you process people/places/events. I think it's a relevant point of discussion since there has been such a critical turn towards nostalgia in popular culture, especially in music as of late.

You've been quoted discussing the timelessness of your sound saying, “I think the sound we have right now fits ‘out’ of time, but, obviously, is still ‘in’ our time. It’s something that could have happened many years ago, but it also sounds contemporary.” What influenced you musically on this record?

I like albums that bring you into a specific world created by the artists, so that was something I really turned to for inspiration. Albums like Dusty in Memphis are really cool—the instrumental palette is consistent through the record, but remains varied and just generally deepens as the record progresses. Plus you never lose Springfield's voice in the recording. I saw a lot of similarities between her and Denise so I wanted to implement a similar approach for our record.

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Read the rest on OMN.

‘here they come’ : doubleplusgood’s second record

The Orwellian dubbed DoublePlusGood has anything but a straight-laced, tyrannical reputation.

In the last two years, the PDX “glitch-pop” duo has been a staple around town in the electronic scene, heating up basement dance parties and tiny bar “stages” (aka corners) at Valentines as well as sweaty all-ages affairs at Backspace or the adult-only Mississippi Studios with loaded electro-pop originals and a sometimes cover of Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” or Beach House’s “10 Mile Stereo.” Next week they’ll play Portland’s latest, hippest bar stage at Bunk Bar on Tuesday, September 20th with Youth.

Although Erik Carlson and Andrew Nelson count the live gigs, especially the fact that they’ve been able to book most of their own bills, and a West Coast tour as highlights of the past year, the real triumph (and relief) was the release of DPG’s second album, Here They Come, The Birds of My Youth, on August 27th at the Doug Fir via SoHiTek Records–the label run by Carlson.

An album that’s been more than a year in the making, Here They Come, The Birds of My Youth is the first DoublePlusGood effort as a duo; producer and vocalist Erik Carlson added drummer Andrew Nelson in 2009 as a live drummer but the relationship spilled over into the next recording, which was completed almost a year ago but “for whatever reason we made the process as cumbersome as possible,” says Erik. ”We did not streamline this,” he laughs.

Erik’s songwriting inspiration came from the pop melodies of Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and both had a penchant for Phil Spector’s ’60s recording techniques. But even with a cohesive vision for the album in mind, the process was easily prolonged. From scheduling time to record in a huge concrete, “bomb shelter basement,” as Andy puts it, which was once a Ford Model-T factory, to organizing the general prerequisites of mixing, mastering, creating artwork and finding money to press the albums, the record was finally ready a year later than anticipated.

But Here They Come, The Birds of My Youth finds the band at its densest and brightest–layers of Carlson’s affected, melodic vocals ride sonic levels of bleeping, twinkling synths alongside added samples that glisten and chirrup, and it’s all backed by the echo-y thump of Nelson’s live drums–and also their proudest. And while the two have been perfecting so many of these songs live over the last two years, the live favorites sparkle in their recorded form.

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Read the rest and watch a video interview on OMN.