Steve Gunn & the Outliners Bring Mellow Guitar Rock To Portland’s Mississippi Studios (SHOW REVIEW)

Steve Gunn makes music for the road, and on Saturday, September 24th that road led him to Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon. Gunn’s latest jaunt with his band the Outliners is in support of his new album Eyes On The Lines, which was released earlier this year. True to its title and to Gunn’s aesthetic, the album is a collection of meandering, introspective guitar rock continuing in the vein of 2014’s Way Out Weather.

It was songs from those two albums that made up the bulk of Gunn’s short but impressive set on Saturday. While his lyrical dwellings on nature and intricate guitar style naturally lend themselves to more a mellow style of rock, Gunn and his band expanded on the songs with exploratory jams that stretched beyond the studio cuts. Aided by the multi-talented Jim Elkington, whose cosmic twang and jazzy stylings on guitar give him a presence not unlike Wilco’s Nels Cline, Gunn led the band through songs like the rambling “Conditions Wild”, “Ancient Jules”, and the intricately picked “Park Bench Smile”. Each song seemed to carry its own pulse as the band let the jams unfold on their own, always grooving in a forward direction as if traveling along a sparse back road. Gunn’s vocals on songs like “Wildwood” and “Way Out Weather” had a calming effect that made listeners in the audience feel more like floating than soaring. Though the set was too abbreviated, coming in at barely an hour, Steve Gunn and the Outliners left the crowd with an appreciation of a style of guitar rock that is simultaneously psychedelic and intellectually stimulating.

Hailing all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, opening act Nap Eyes lived up to their band name with a set up sleepy, lethargic grooves. These are compliments, of course, and the band left those who showed up earlier enough to catch them smitten. Playing songs off their two albums Whine of the Mystic and Thought Rock Fish Scale, the band brought to mind Velvet Underground, Luna, and Yo La Tengo, but with a poppier sensibility. Bouncy basslines gave the songs a joyous innocence as the lyrics meditated on the mundane, and the shy, friendly personality of lead singer Nigel Chapman fit with the music even more so. In a humble way, Chapman appeared overly grateful to even be allowed on the stage, but by the end of the set, those who had not previously heard Nap Eyes were the grateful ones.

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter