Portland’s Chores is another band with whom I was hoping to play a show while on our aforementioned tour (although it didn’t quite work out this time around), but they didn’t really fit in with the previous post since technically I didn’t discover them through myspace but rather in a live setting, when they played the Knockout back in March. Their sound is total comfort food to me— the kind of ramshackle-yet-anthemic guitar-happy indie-rock made manifest in the 90s by the likes of Pavement and Archers of Loaf— although they also display a refreshingly casual disregard for genre consistency. There’s a bit of Television’s stiff post-punk in “My Own Private Esperanto” and some late-70s-soul urban-cop-show swagger in “New New Deal”; there’s “Super Car”‘s dark, grungy buzz-and-chug, and “Familiar Order”‘s easy-rolling countrified jangle. Of course, Chores’ forte remains big swooning/surging rock such as “Make The World Go Away” and “Touching Can Harm The Art”, with their slightly mathy/angular riffs and shouty choruses.
Preview the entirety of The Subtle Politics of the Public Hammock here, buy it here.
