Seattlest Pix 09Nov24
Tuesdays are Muppet Days
Seattle to Remain Famous for Coffee and Rain
Thanksgiving Pairing Suggestion: Dessert Isn't Just a Meal
Eight Things A Seattle Sports Fan Can Be Thankful For
Carlos Rodela doesn't hold much stock with the Seattle music scene, either its cloistered, big-fish-in-a-small-pond pretensions or with its rock star showmanship.
"The idea of musicianmanship is absolute shit," he told us over coffee. "There is no playing better, there's just difference. Different Songs. What did Elvis Costello say? That rock and roll is the 14-year-old kid in a bedroom coming up with a new rock song. That's rock and roll."
Rodela's been around the scene for long enough to know. His first solo act, Mini Life, started back in 1998. From the beginning, Rodela adopted a strong DIY ethos that eschewed close collaboration in the local scene. "It was mostly an Internet thing," he explains. "We had some local store presence, but mostly it was albums being sold online."
With Mini Life, described as "DJ Shadow-meets-Neutral Milk Hotel," Rodela hit the road, touring heavily with other acts all along the West Coast, before ever really trying to develop a strong Seattle-following. After releasing three discs, Rodela moved on to a two-piece, White Stripes-style rock outfit, Max Fisher, and although he toured and recorded an EP, Max Fischer never really took off.
So late last year, Rodela returned to solo work, but turned away from the heavily electronic trip-hop of Mini Life, stripping down the sound, and started writing the songs he just released under the new name, Pallaton.
"I wanted to say, here's the song, here's the guitar, don't let anything drown it out," he said, explaining the low-fi style of the first Pallaton disc, a stick can be a spaceship. That said, the album retains some of the hallmarks of trip-hop and trance: long drones, haunting empty sonic-spaces, wistful lyrics. "Even Though" features a mournful, drawn-out chorus of "Hallelujah," while "faded and warped lands" makes use of Native American chanting, which harkens to Rodela's American Indian heritage. (He's part Onawa and "pallaton" means "warrior" in the Apache language.)
The standout track on the record, though, is the Queens of the Stone Age-esque (minus the burly rhythm section) "Inside My Head," a haunting, brutal confessional song. It sort of becomes the centerpiece of a stick can be a spaceship, representing the power Rodela can achieve with only a guitar and his voice. A high-quality demo version of the song, featuring heavy studio washes and some synth work that references back to his Mini Life days, serves as an extra track on the disc.
Pallaton also splits a new disc, Figures Missing Wings, with emBROWNLOWe, a Portland-based singer-songwriter, and is releasing a DVD of music videos and concert footage accumulated over almost a decade of touring and video work.
Pallaton CD release party for "Figures Without Wings" is Sunday, Nov. 12 at the Rendezvous. 2320 Second Ave. 10 pm, free admission.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Post a comment (Comment Policy)