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31 Knots

Rock / Progressive / Indie

Portland, OR | San Francisco, CA

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The best music is always truly indefinable. Words can't truly describe Tom Waits' caterwaul the same way they can't explain what it feels like to experience the deafening volume of a J. Mascis guitar solo. Portland, Oregon's prolific 31Knots have described their sound as "post-apocalyptic Vaudevillian punk," and while that's an apt description, it doesn't begin to express the level of demented-pop brilliance on the band's latest full-length, The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere.

From the stuttering sequenced intro of the opener "Beauty" to the airy ambient ending of the closer "Walk With Caution," is the complete realization of the sound 31Knots have been working toward for the last nine years. "We really like to make the live show into a cabaret-preacher spectacle, but this is the first time we were really able to express it on a recording," says frontman Joe Haege who along with bassist Jay Winebrenner and drummer Jay Pellicci make up the core of the group. "We wanted to push ourselves into an area we didn't know and see if we could pull it off."

Not only did 31Knots pull it off with Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere, but thanks to an expert mixing job by
Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and engineering by Pellicci, they transformed their musical landscape into a skewed fantasy world located somewhere between Alice In Wonderland and Cursive's Happy Hollow. "The Savage Boutique" is a horndriven pop masterpiece that slithers along like the beast the lyrics describe; "The Salted Tongue" features a sing-along so memorable that it should be illegal; and the alternately glitchy and giddy six-minute "Hit List Shakes" sounds like Captain Beefheart recontextualized as experimental indie rock.

However, despite the album's curious imagery and song titles, there is a twisted red thread connecting The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere. "All these songs were spawned from thinking about how we're inundated with all the information in the universe," Haege explains. "I guess that's why the album stars with those glitched-out sounds; in a way that's the way the world is right now he continues. "It's all these angular abrupt things coming at you from every perspective and at the end of the day, the idea of trying to be a decent human being becomes absurd."

Although Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere's scope is grand, the album's goal was simple: to try to recapture the intense love of music we all felt at some point in our lives. "I want to grab a piece from my own childhood and what was exciting to me, and it wasn't always that every performer nailed every note or looked cool," Haege says, attempting to articulate a concept as indefinable as 31Knots' music. "It feels so much more uncertain, but I feel like that's what we're ready for now in a lot of ways," he continues. "It's fun to be in environments where there's a reason to see the band. In some tiny slice of life, it's larger than life."

The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere is that album. It's enchanting, otherworldly and, yes, idiosyncratic, but it's also a bold new direction for a band you may have written off as something completely different. Sure, art is hard, but for 31Knots it's harder to stagnate. When Haege sings, "We are now close to world renowned for doing none other than what we're told," on the staccato interlude "The Days and Nights of Lust and Presumption." It's not empty boasts; it's the truth. Don't you owe to yourself to find out why? -Jonah Bayer

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