Explode Into Colors

[July 2nd, 2008]

[DUB-ROCK DANCE PARTY] The Twilight Cafe is the kind of place you wind up at and think, “Why don’t I come here all the time? Why don’t I just make this, like, my bar?” From its no-frills, strip mall-style locale to the sign that reads, “We have SPARKS,” as if it were the universe-folding “spice” from Dune, it’s a strangely charming club that feels more Portland than most of downtown does these days. Just don’t miss the last bus home after the Explode Into Colors show.

Things started late last Friday night (to account for barbecue season). Turnout was low and there was no merch table in sight: basement-esque in the best way. Jenny Hoyston, a recent transplant who also plays guitar and sings with San Francisco post-punk outfit Erase Errata, made the evening’s opening moves. She forgot her guitar (not sure how that happens) but soldiered on with a baby Casio and an iPod. A dude played a nearby pinball machine through Holy Smokes’ four-song set, but the noise didn’t interfere with the local boy-girl duo’s guitar fuzz, discordant hollers and driving beats.

Explode Into Colors took longer to set up than Holy Smokes took to perform (“We have this out-of-tune melodica that we have to tune the entire band to,” bassist-vocalist Claudia Meza told the crowd), but the all-female all-rock all-the-time trio’s all-too-short set was certainly worth the wait. Between drummer Lisa Shonberg (also in Olympia’s Kickball), multi-instrumentalist Heather Treadway (who’s played with Tender Forever’s Melanie Valera) and Meza (an ex-member of Hornet Leg and Japanther), EIC has one of the tightest, most layered rhythm sections in Portland. And it was mostly the bass and wall of percussion that made it through to the couple dozen enthusiastic attendees on Friday—keyboard and melodica disappearing “into my ass,” Treadway joked after the set.

Despite the set’s slightly muddied sound, the close-knit trio kept its dark, dubbed-up dance-punk at the fore. It sounds like Bollywood cowboys and Indians having it out on a glimmering Old West set: Kings of the Wild Frontier-era Adam Ant meets the Slits, with some M.I.A. thrown in to ensure maximum dancing. Missing the last bus actually seems a small price to pay.