I think the old-fashioned idea of recording a single, gauging the reaction, then recording singles until you have enough tried-and-true material to put out an album is a good one. Sure, the creative geniuses of the late 60s and early 70s, with their orchestral clusterfucks and masturbatory double albums, may have balked at this notion. But most of them were forced to operate under the former system until they either a) accumulated a fanbase so large and devoted that no one cared about being bludgeoned with a twenty-minute keyboard jam with extended drum solo; or b) everybody, including the heads of the record labels, were so stoned it made no difference anyhow. Theoretically, punk rock put an end to this (this requires we conveniently forget Sandinista), but the damage had already been done. These days bands are expected to come out of the gate with fully realized albums.
The No-No's, a coed Portland indie-pop quartet, have released the musical equivalent of a novella (take your pick-- short album or long EP?) called Let Your Shadow Out. The title track is such a bang-up opener, I endangered the lives of all those traveling in the eastbound lanes of I-240 early Saturday morning (owner of large white truck with the Smiths sticker and Ohio plates-- I am truly sorry) when my overt enthusiasm compromised my driving skill.
Let Your Shadow Out is one of the most perfect two-minute pop songs I've heard in a long time, from the bounce of the verses to the growl of the choruses. I would be inclined to refer to this as pop-punk-- the incontestable catchiness of the material (think the Fastbacks on a really good day) undercut with Robin Bowser's Cub-like vocals would seem to steer it that way. But for the negative associations (admit it: when I say pop-punk, you scoff and think about overproduced three-chord wonders from California and the Midwest), I won't.
Three out of four bandmembers have full-time gigs with other bands, which ensures an odd sort of dynamic: the tightness of technically proficient musicians, undercut with a sort of off-the-cuff weekend project mentality. That said, there's little aural similarity to the Jicks (guitarist Mike Clark), the Halo Benders (bassist Ralf Youtz), or Dub Narcotic (drummer Heather Dunn) in the No-No's. One might be able to make a comparison to Dunn's former projects, Tiger Trap and the Bangs, but Let Your Shadow Out is neither as cutesy as the former, nor as punk as the latter.
There is no other track on Let Your Shadow Out that lives up to the promise of the first. My callous first reaction is this: when three-fourths of the band is involved with better-known musical projects, there's scant time for writing and rehearsing a full album of Grade A material for a sideline operation. On the band's website, Bowser-- the only full-time No-No-- laments their inability to tour due to conflicting schedules with the other members' bands.
The more obvious answer may arise from the fact that no other song-- save the under-one-minute rant, "I've Had Enough"-- matches the tempo of the first. The other songs aren't bad-- in fact "The Strategy" is a great, retro pop number with nice harmonies and some charmingly wry lyrics: "I'm not the alpha female/ I always blow it on the first impression/ I wasn't trained to be polite, you know." Likewise, the early 60s-influenced "Girlfriend" has its moments, especially as a vehicle for Robin Bowser's vocals, which, in this context, sound a bit like a nouveau Lesley Gore, but without the crying.
The acoustic ballads ("Empty Bed" and "Sunshine") don't really work. Softer, slower songs exaggerate the imperfections in Bowser's voice, and her off-key spunk tends to be lost in the translation. The No-Nos' simplistic arrangement is designed for the unruly pop of the faster numbers. Likewise, the Monkees cover, "Love Is Only Sleeping," though fairly well executed, doesn't seem particularly well-suited to the strengths of this band.
The danger of working on a song-by-song basis is the possibility of never matching the strength of your best song. The relative obscurity of the No-No's no doubt diminishes their chances of landing on the next Now THAT's What I Call Music! compilation, but one really great song is no small accomplishment. I could name scores of bands with more consistent albums who couldn't put out a good single if they tried. Let Your Shadow Out exhibits the kind of infectious, yet prickly sound that characterized a certain style of Northwest indie-pop a decade ago (before the musical landscape got so subdivided that it seems all I do is hyphenate genres). Not revolutionary or challenging. Listening to it won't make you smarter, or even make you appear smarter-- it's just good fun.
