Album Spotlight: The Blow
If dreams had soundtracks, Khaela Maricich would be the world-renowned, most sought-after writer of them.
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, her knack for catchy, techno-inspired pop comes as no surprise, as the city is one of many modern hubs of art and music culture on the western frontier.
In addition to recording music, Maricich holds the post of artist-in-residence at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), where she does drawings, builds illuminated paper sculptures and performs a monologue-based opera called Blue Sky Versus Night Sky. It's no wonder she has little time to post on her chic blog, The Touch Me Feeling, and it's a great wonder she has any time to eat or sleep in between her many projects.
Up until 2002, Maricich worked under her own name or the quirky moniker Get The Hell Out Of The Way Of The Volcano, but in recent years switched gears and began working under the alias The Blow, corroborating with fellow Oregonian and contemporary artist Jona Bechtolt.
A veteran of the one-man band (his own being YACHT), Bechtolt teams up with a wide range of artists for unusual or bizarre projects, as a singer, programmer, blogger or many other music-infused roles.
In the latest release from this flamboyantly fun duo, Paper Television, the trippy, conversational performers seem to have put a static-free version of a loopy, twisted dream world on a record. Catchy beats synched with brilliantly mastered synthesizers and folksy, straight-forward melodies and monologues result in tracks taken right out of a sleeper's scattered thoughts.
Tagged variously as tropical, R&B, pop, electronica and many other genres, this album mixes instrumentation from each with enigmatic lyrics that uncover some of the greatest mysteries of life.
From bluntly trying to explain the secrets of the opposite sex
to each side in
Pile of Gold
to flushing all attempts down
the drain and taking on the typical girl-bash-boy mentality (but
with much more hilarious metaphor) in
Babay (Eat A Critter, Feel Its Wrath)
, The
Blow will blow you away with their ability to take traditional
themes and twist them into completely original and unprecedented
works of pop art.
Featured Tracks:
Parentheses
Bonjour Jeune Fille

