Music Blog

It's cold outside and it's been raining hard all day. It's also the tail end of a particularly exhausting weekend, and tomorrow's creeping closer each hour, promising to come too early. I keep thinking about my morning alarm--how it will rudely wake me from a sleep and force me into work and work pants and a coffee shop before 7:30 am. I hate Mondays. This is what I'm thinking about before Sun Angle gathers in front of the Rontoms fireplace.

Made up of Portland music veterans Marius Libman (Copy), Papi Fimbres (O Bruxo) and Charlie Salas Humara (Panther), the project sounds like turning your heat up to 80 degrees in February and sipping hard liquor out of coconuts. It's warm, disordered, and most of all, it's kind of nutty.

The group is spastic, grunting and yelping and flailing through the set. In between songs we get tidbits of talk from Humara, the singer who doesn't bother finishing--or, in some cases, starting--his stories before jumping head first into the next song. He's spouting rapid memories and tying each to a song and it's disorienting and moving at the same time.

Then there's the music, with the jerky guitar riffs and panicky drum solos usually reserved for hard-edged, 70s garage punk. The outfit picks up and puts down instruments in unison, but it's hard to understand how--there's no hard beginning or end to anything. Songs are loud and unrestrained through and through, but the audience is following, somehow, through the ups and downs and on and offs, through the ride. And it's fun, because what we're hearing sounds unrehearsed in the best way. It's not polished, it's dizzying and maddening and catchy and energetic.

Take "Vague Light," a jostled, cavernous display of superhuman drumming, or "Yes Beach," a lighter anthem that floats vocals over schizophrenic bass and guitar. Some songs start out nice and neat and others are messy to begin but each has a quiet theme ribboned through that's tying everything together, like a 1000-count jigsaw puzzle with all its pieces.

Sun Angle makes music that helps you forget your problems, mainly because there's not enough room in your head for the both of them. And sometimes that's all we need: a vacation between the weekend and work week, a way to cheat Monday morning for a few more hours and remember that right now we're here and this is happening and everyone wants to be here, 7 am wakeup call or not.

Tagged: live review