专辑简介

Fever- THE BAND WHO WASN'T THERE...

In many ways, Portland quartet Fever are a great disappearing act. Their sound and their shows grab the eye and ear with what isn't there. Most noticeably absent is an electric guitar but instead of sounding thin, the chugging keyboards of Automne and driving bass of Timothy create a perfect backing for singer Natalie's impassioned vocals. Drummer Dhananjaya's volatile rhythms combine the drive of punk with the spaciousness of dub. Their propulsive yet ethereal sound mixes Nuggets-era garage rock with haunted blues ballads to suggest what perhaps the Doors would sound like had they signed to 4AD. Instead, Fever mine the rare but fertile ground between gothic and garage. Live at Backspace on a Saturday night, Fever mixed beauty with aggression like a bartender pouring absinthe over a sugar cube. From the stabbing keyboard chords to the sinewy bass lines and tense, driving drums, they had the intensity of the Bad Seeds while Valentine proved herself the ideal singer for such an enigmatic band. Her vocals are strong with the intensity of Siousxie Sioux but her stage presence is something else entirely. She performs her own disappearing act by going off the stage and wandering among the crowd while singing. In an act at once impetuous and oblique, she simultaneously confronts and evades the assembled, walking among them but almost ignoring them, turning around to watch the band or looking above the audiences heads. Musically exempt from the confrontational audience-baiting of punk, she instead becomes a messenger, physically delivering her vocals to the crowd while the band kicks out a febrile din. They slowed things down with a cover of the Gris Gris' "Mary 38" and for a few moments delivered an authentic slice of New Orleans hoodoo to downtown Portland. Next they confounded expectations with a short song featuring Valentine on guitar. They banged out a few last numbers before disappearing for good from stage, leaving an almost palpable aura of mystery lingering among the audience who left knowing they'd just seen- or not seen- something very special - Chris Streng