Psapp, Juana Molina, José González at the Doug Fir

Cool cool show last night.

Psapp, a quirky English band, went on first. Their sound is well…cute. They like kitties. They like gizmos that make funny sounds. They make cute little stuffed animals kiss each other during their performance. Oh and their music’s pretty chill.

According to their drummer, their visit to Portland was fairly benign (at least compared to some of their other stops), and he didn’t arrive in the city with time enough for a trip to Powells, which is tragic indeed, but he’d have to show up at a week in advance to take it all in so he was really doomed all along and didn’t know it.

Juana Molina came on next...just her, her instruments and her music gadgetry. Her voice is lovely, and she did this one song where she recorded a vocal track, looped it, then made her gadgetry make wonderful sounds around it. Beautiful. There’s some YouTube out there of her show the next night in Seattle if you want to check it out.

But the reason I was there was José González. Someone vacated a spot right next to the stage after Juana’s set, so I was able to get right next to the stage.



He started off with “Deadweight on Velveteen”, performed most of his more popular songs, including “Stay in the Shade”, “Crosses”, "Heatbeats" and "Lovestain". He ended with his cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” – my personal fave. I swooned like a girl.

And yes, I was totally a stalker fan, chasing him down before the show so I could profess my undying adulation and to have him sign my copy of Veneer.

Links to all the band sites can be found here.