Lennon did it. Ditto Sinatra, Pink Floyd, Lee Hazelwood and Sir Elton. Pseudosix, a mainstay of the fertile Portland, Oregon indie rock scene, follows suite as they kick off their sophomore disc with (gasp) a ballad!
“I wanted to come right out and put my balls on the table,” declares leader Tim Perry regarding the opening cut of Pseudosix’s swanky self-titled new release. “‘Some Sort of Revelation’ evolves into this crazy orgy of sound and strings and music and screams, yet somehow manages to be less than three minutes. I thought that was appropriate too.”
With Perry on vocals/guitar along with bassist Brandon Barnhill, guitarist Emil Amos, Jay Clarke on piano, drummer Jake Morris, and violinist Kate O’Brien, Pseudosix’s eponymous effort took a year to write and record, a time frame longer than expected due to financial constraints and scheduling (the band members dabble in several side projects including The Joggers, Dolorean, The Standard, Iretsu, and Eric Bachman/Crooked Fingers among others).
Akin to such artists as Eric Matthews, Joe Henry, Belle & Sebastian, and Sufjan Stevens, Pseudosix (a nonsensical name conjured by Perry simply because it was more interesting than his “suburban” surname) has achieved its goal of combining baroque pop song-craft, vocal harmonic bliss, and the raw edge of a live performance in ten polished tracks which seamlessly vacillate from lounge to neo-psychedelia.
Thanks to engineer Jay Pellici and master mixer Jeff Saltzman, Pseudosix sounds as if they’re in your living room. Recalls Perry, “Pellici knows what he's doing and he's a goddamn workhorse. We once spent twenty-four hours straight in the studio together. No sleep. By the end, I was having lengthy conversations with imaginary goblins and furniture and shit. At some point I looked over at Jay, and there he was patiently putting tie-tacks around microphone chords and ever-so-sanely placing them in a milk crate. Amazing.”
Yet credit must be afforded to the band itself, which had the guts to self-produce their most important record to date. Notes Perry: “it's like looking in the mirror and trying to be objective about your own appearance. Am I ugly? Am I cute? What do I even look like?”
The songs essentially began as Perry’s home demos. One by one the various band members added their indelible stamp to the tracks. Perry and Amos provide the group with an essential yin yang as the former prefers to labor over every nuance and the latter works in the moment.
Fittingly, the record is dedicated to the memory of a feline named Jimmy Carter. “Jimmy Carter was one hell of a friend to me” Perry states. “I met her several years ago when I first moved to town. We'd been tight ever since. She put in a lot of hours with me down in the basement while I worked on the album. I'd sit there with headphones, singing, strumming, and swimming around in my own world and she'd always be there to pull me out. She died shortly after the album was complete. But her legacy lives on.”
--Tom Semioli
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Pseudosix is available now through Sonic Boom Recordings.
http://www.pseudosix.com
http://www.myspace.com/pseudosix
