In the 1950s, American songwriter Harlan Howard once described country music as possessing “three chords and the truth.” This refers to the genre’s direct simplicity (both musically and lyrically) and its ability to relate to the listener by emphasizing authenticity over unnecessary complication. Howard wasn’t wrong; some of the best songs do thrive in the most stripped-down and earnest set of circumstances. However, I think the definition has evolved well past what Howard was picturing when he first stated those words.
This is especially true as our more modern era has developed. While we haven’t creatively lost the magic held inside a straightforward mixture of guitar, bass, piano, or drums, electronic instruments are taking us further into offerings of emotional intimacy. Some might argue that playing a synthesizer doesn’t make you a musician, but think of what that tech can offer. Would Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” still hit the same way without its signature synth riff holding the iconic track together?
Bands like Wilco went even further down this rabbit hole with their albums Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Instead of merely utilizing synthesizers, they experimented. Yankee incorporated field recordings and radio transmissions, while Ghost embraced improvisational elements and tones inspired by lead man Jeff Tweedy’s then-chronic migraines. All the while, the group never let go of their magnetically honest melodicism. They just roughed it up a bit more amidst layered, unorthodox lines of creativity.
That sense of approach is what first pulled me toward the work of Portland, Oregon-based “singer-songwriter turned sound artist and producer” blond-noise. I covered their track “home” back in May; a song barely holding on to a tenuous melody amidst instrumentation headed for a breakdown. Rather than establishing a pattern, I feel like “home” was only setting the table for blond-noise’s next track, a full-on, brain-melting swelter of out-of-bodied fever form called, "as well as I can be / right now in Portland, Oregon.”
Made with a “collage of modular synths, bursts of noise, and jazz-inspired omnichord melodies that unfold over a city soundscape,” the instrumental spins together synthesizer and experimentation into a pavement-wavering, almost hallucinatory tapestry. Described as being about “the existential unease of making art and finding moments of joy as the world seems to unravel,” this is one of those tracks that says so much by saying only two words (“Hey” and “Bye”). The rest of the transcript speaks only in sound.
Opening with a surrealist-tinged, note-plinking swoon of Sparklehorse-esque levels of innocent unease, “as well as I can be / right now in Portland, Oregon” trips through the mind with dizzying depth and direction. Are we floating through space on a ship of Tom Waits-hired circus people, or is that only the great galaxy of the self? Bursts of noise rip over your eardrums like waves, calming in a humming safe point that’s only interrupted when a softly spoken “Hey” is almost briefly startling due to having such delicate contrast. Then the tsunami of noise crashes down your door again.
Is this drowning, which way is the sun? Am I on a beach, alone with just the thoughts in my ears as ripping slices of water cut over my head? No, now there are sounds of a cityscape. What feels only internal is now extroverted, like living this moment in a world surrounded by people’s time-signature pulses while a cocooning cacophony spreads out like a mushroom cloud of the mind. But the more the world appears, the more that mentally chaotic stretch feels like it slows. Is this where the joy comes? Not from the sonic overwhelm of a city, but in the tune of how we connect to others? How we aren’t so alone after all? And how we use art to communicate that feeling?
I love instrumentals like this, because they make you stop everything. No phone screens, algorithms, television shows, or force-fed apathy. Instead, you simply sit inside a journey of sound. Maybe it makes you feel nothing but noise, and that’s fine (it isn’t for everyone). But knowing how blond-noise layered these textures purely from improvised, experimental creativity that spoke to them out of the air strikes me right at the heart. Making something out of nothing; existence from loose threads. I go to that place every day I write, and a strange, beautiful, inexplicable passenger is often waiting. Nothing I do would ever exist as purely as it does without their presence.
If the human creativity of “as well as I can be / right now in Portland, Oregon” wasn’t enough, blond-noise collaborated with spouses José-Luis Olivares and Jon Daries of Portland, Oregon’s Madonno Productions to make a video for the song as well. As you might expect, the experience is wildly trippy, with blond-noise portrayed as a doll-like character created entirely of classic television static. Japanese miniature kitchen appliances found at a Portland thrift store are included in the setup, as well as an entirely constructed dollhouse kitchen and surreal, oversized props.
Most camera work for the creation was done in Madonno’s basement and living room. They mixed stop-motion animation and a real-world setting by also filming blond-noise at a party with free cake and coffee for attendees at Virtua Gallery in Portland’s now-defunct Lloyd Center mall earlier this year. The two states of mind come together to illustrate moments like making a cake for your friends, how this revisits the theme of community, and that with this distraction “sometimes it’s easy to forget about the bad things.” Even if the world is possibly falling apart and all the blond-noise character is really doing in this moment is having a complete existential crisis over it.
But at least there’s cake.
Our musical community on Substack is really lucky to also have blond-noise as a member, and I wanted to close my thoughts on this song and related video by incorporating a small paragraph they had in their latest piece about the closing of the Lloyd Center. I knew the last sentence with a person’s wish was my closer for this review before I’d written a single word of it, because I feel like it describes the entire “as well as I can be / right now in Portland, Oregon” project in a perfect nutshell. It’s the quality that makes this intricate palette of experimental sound (synthesizers and all) work as well as it does. Chords, truth, and all… thoroughly thought-provoking.
When I was looking through the last issue of Planet Lloyd (the mall’s indie newspaper), I found a story about people transforming a “Capitalism Fountain”3 in front of the mall into a wishing well. One person wished, “that everything that is in the process of degrading…degrades exquisitely.”
Listen Below On Bandcamp (And Find blond-noise at blond-noise.com):
Official Streaming Links:
Apple Music - music.apple.com/us/album/as-well-as-i-can-be-right-now-in-portland-oregon-single/6787464520?ls=1
YouTube Music - https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nbCDQGSjc8i0mzznLSh0OIOBRJfdnPrWo
Spotify - open.spotify.com/album/1lxZAUQoUcivGn0KBf6Psi
Tidal - https://tidal.com/album/540102617
Also Follow blond-noise & Madonno Productions On YouTube & IG:
blond-noise:
@blond_noise | youtube.com/@blond-noise
Madonno Productions:
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