So the idea for Poor Aim: Love Songs was to make a short record of radio-ready pop hits, at the time a new idea for the Blow. The first collaboration between Khaela Maricich (previously the only Blow member) and Jona Bechtolt (YACHT), they put it out in 2004 as the inaugural Pregnancy Series release, curated dually by Portland hometeamers States Rights Records and Slender Means Society, and had it reissued by K this year after commissioning remixes (from Lucky Dragons, Strategy, and Alan Fortarte of White Rainbow, among others) for most of the original tracks.
Those few who copped a copy at the time likely found it easy to recognize big pieces of it on the Blow's 2006 full-length Paper Television. Each record features tricky couples math, naturalism-as-sex-and-love metaphors, YACHT's propulsive synthwork and Maricich's pointedly broken syntax: Maricich asked the boy on "Hey Boy" "why you didn't call me?" and told another lover "You don't even believe in outer space/ Equal to the rate at which you doubt my crying face." Some dude asks her to put her heart in his hand and even though she knows he might hock it she can't keep it in her pocket, so, oh man.
The Blow beat accusations of exhibitionism and confessionalism the same way rappers do-- with specifics, and without being particularly sentimental. Rock 'n' roll, de-abstracted. When on "The Sky Opened Wide Like the Tide" she's wondering where her friends are tonight, her guesses are practical, a citywide Olympia, Wash., tour: "Are they at the Reef? Are they at Ben Moore's? Are they at the Capitol Theater?" By Paper Television, YACHT caught up, plundering commercial radio airwaves for regional rap crazes (snap music, hyphy, crunk, etc) and Timbalandesque gorgeous sound to put together the perfect palate for his partner's rapper sensibility. Poor Aim, for Bechtolt, was a more mixed bag-- "Hey Boy" came from J-Kwon's "Tipsy", a Billboard #2 that year, but most of his other original tracks stuck hard to the indie-dance friendly sped-up rave that the Blow are now notable for barely using.
The hip-hopization of indie rock was (is) a long time coming. By commissioning the six new remixes here, the Blow admit their songs aren't perfect, could be different, or better, and that they're open to new ideas. It's a casual gesture, too-- no pretense of their art as island-- inviting friends and like-minded people to make new work from theirs. The newly remixed Poor Aim is reminiscent of other Portland documents (the States Rights Records Bro Zone compilation comes to mind), on which artists feature other artists guest on and remix one another's work, bringing a mixtape mindset to an arena where work usually has to be singular and hermetically complete just to be taken seriously. On "The Love That I Crave", Maricich sings, "I'm so tired of being wasted just chasing the same old thing/ I want to get hit by a big thing, come take me, change me," which is as good an explanation of why they bothered to remix all this stuff as any.
YACHT and Maricich both take the opportunity to do reworks of their own, one way they embrace the evolution of their group. YACHT's "Hock It" remix loops the track's catchphrase to give it a chorus-- important for those commercial aspirations-- and also update it: give his track more heft, more G-funk, more quirk. His new "Hock It" is less linear, more club-worthy. Los Angeles-based Lucky Dragons aka Luke Fishbeck is the one non-Portland remixer. But it was his sojourns in Portland and tours with Portland artists over the last four years that helped YACHT, E*Rock, Bobby Birdman, and co. create their DIY-laptop scene. His Blow remixes are the smartest-- turning "The Sky Opened Wide" back into the gypsy ballad that it was before the electronics got to it, all wistful violin, guitar, and recorder; then taking the "we're over here" samples from that same song and making a new one of his own to close the record: pitch-shifting computer flutes; floating voices; samples cut in and out and scrambled, gently.
Strategy, a Portland-based remixer, LCDs-out "The Love That I Crave", glamming up the vocals and giving it a disco sheen, while Alan Fortarte takes "Hey Boy" to it's "Tipsy"-limit, chopping up Maricich's ABCs. It'd be easy to say then that the upshot of Poor Aim: Love Songs, v. 2, is process-in-motion, or window-into-band-at-work, proof of evolution, etc but if that stuff exists here it's on the fringes. The songs here are as charming, detailed and touching as ever. What more do you really need?
