If there’s any alluring indie mystique to Portland, it’s most likely due to late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, who attended high school on the west side of town and recorded his most-loved work there.
Before Smith, Portland's primary musical contribution to the universe was the Kingsmen, and their worldwide party anthem, “Louie Louie”. But Smith sketched a virtual map of the city with his whispery voice, and even went so far as to adopt a local street name, Elliott Street, as his first name (legend has it he considered his birth name of Steven as “too jock-y”). To his fans, Smith’s music made Portland seem infinitely more romantic than it ever could be in real life.
After Smith came the deluge, as swarms of indie rockers descended upon the town. In the late ‘90s, politically charged riot-girls Sleater-Kinney arrived from punk rock hot-bed Olympia, Washington. They brought Stephen Malkmus and his genre-defining college-rock collective, Pavement, who were all from Stockton, California, along with them. The two bands began hanging out a lot at the Beulahland bar in the North West part of town, and in the process, turned Beulahland into one of the hippest hang-outs in all of Portland.
Other indie rock alumni who call Portland their home are husband and wife duo Anita and Kevin Robison, aka Viva Voce, who relocated from Alabama, and indie-folk songstress Laura Veirs, who inbetween recording sessions and touring, gives guitar lessons to kids from her home in the centre of the town. Even the British indie music scene is represented in Portland, with both former Smiths guitar legend Johnny Marr (now a full-time member of Modest Mouse), and Chris Jarman of Leeds indie charmers The Cribs, recently moving to the town.
This trend of artists moving to Portland after already having gained some level of fame might explain why few people are even aware of Portland’s incredible concentration of mu-sical talent. Virtually none of these groups can really be considered “Portland bands”, since none are natives. There are a few exceptions – hugely popular indie rock group Modest Mouse originate from the town, as do alternative pop group The Shins (whose singer and keyboardist Brett Mercer lives in Elliott Smith’s former home). Both bands toiled the local live circuit, playing many bars, clubs and hotels in Portland before really making the big time.
So, despite the lack of a distinctive Portland sound akin to Seattle’s grunge scene or the post-White Stripes explosion of blues-influenced garage rock from Detroit circa 2001, the sheer caliber of its musical luminaries have firmly planted the city on the musical map.
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