Nathan Fake, a young house artist out of Britain, will open for Four Tet who is on tour in support of his newest album, There Is Love In You, released January 25th on Domino Records.

The album is the first album in more than four years from the Four Tet camp, and it has been well received in the world of electronic music. Four Tet has been setting standards and moving the electronic genre forward since his debut album, Dialogue, in 1999.

There Is Love In You is a very melodic, and at times dark release, and shows similar characteristics to his previous works. Where There Is… seems to depart is the sheer weight of the tracks. Two thousand one’s astounding Pause is filled with seemingly light electronic songs that can be played at any party, while There Is… is not such an album. It needs some time to build and be appreciated.

If you’re in the Portland and you like dance music, post-rock or even just indie rock, Four Tet and Nathan Fake will surely deliver.

The show is 21+ and tickets are still available for $14. The doors open at 8 PM, show starts at 9 PM.

As lead singer Eric Johnson, began strumming the opening chords to “Primitive Man,” the lead track from the band’s most recent album, people began flocking in through the door, filling the space in front of the band and then assembling further away in an umbrella pattern around the stage. Johnson lazily continued strumming as more people got up from the benches on the side or threw down their cigarettes and rushed in.

Johnson kept strumming before turning to his band to ask if they were ready, but the backing track wouldn’t stop playing. When he received confirmation from his band, he turned to the mic and said in a kind of playfully aggressive tone, “Turn that music off, we’re gonna play now!” The crowd roared and nobody looked back.

The band began their set leaning on The Ruminant Band, their latest release, but dipped into their back catalog a few times to play some crowd favorites. At one point they crushed a version of Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues” sounding more like Young than he himself can these days.

The band was unmistakably ecstatic to be there, a sentiment Johnson echoed in-between numerous songs. They drew the crowd in quickly and by the second song the audience was yelping, stomping, clapping and singing along. People began dancing, took their air guitars out of their cases, and forgot about whatever was on their mind. There was not a soul in the building who wasn’t having a great time.

The most striking thing about Fruit Bat’s was the way they were able to command an audience–almost as if it would be your loss for not giving them your full attention. Eric Johnson and Co. had a stage presence rarely exhibited in modern rock, and the energy they were unmistakably emanating was gobbled up by the crowd and used to sing, dance and enjoy the music on an entirely different level.

Fruit Bat’s rarely took their foot off the accelerator, but when they did it was at the perfect moment. The ballads felt tender (a few lighters came out), the riffs felt heavy, and it all felt fun, personal and relaxed. Eric Johnson thanked his “newly adopted home state” and Fruit Bats escaped into the night.

Their brand of folk/roots/rock has something that everyone can enjoy and the energy they brought to the stage could pull the most determined wallflower to the dance floor.

Check out Fruit Bat’s covering Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues” in Scotland late last year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fruit Bats

The Portland/Chicago-based group Fruit Bats will bring their unique brand of folk-rock to the WOW Hall in Eugene this coming Saturday. The band is a fusion of Dr. Dog-style alt-country jams and The Shins indie pop hooks.  They’re known to give a solid live performance full of energy, while maintaining the integrity of their studio recordings.

They will be accompanied by fellow Oregon indie rockers Tu Fawning who’ll bring a more experimental and contemporary Portland rock sound to the table that should contrast nicely with the classic sound of Fruit Bats.

Fruit Bats are on the road behind their latest studio effort The Ruminant Band released in December 2009. The concert will presumably lean on this release–an album that is equal parts elegance and lighthearted fun in the true spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Acoustic guitars shimmer over lead singer Eric Johnson’s beautiful singing voice for 12 tracks of folk-rock simplicity.

The doors open at 7 PM and the show begins at 8 PM. Tickets are $10.00 in advance and $12.00 at the door. You can get your ticket through the WOW Hall’s website, at the WOW Hall box office or at any Ticketmaster outlet.

The only concrete detail that Panda Bear gave away is that his next album will be very different from 2007’s Person Pitch, which provided the listener with a sonic layering of samples covered in reverb-heavy, yet disarmingly sincere vocals.

Panda Bear says that Animal Collective plan on moving away from the sample-based style that has been a staple in recent years and that his solo record will also reflect that change.

He discusses the major differences between his upcoming record and Person Pitch in this excerpt:

Ped. Tv: How’s that sounding? I know that you’ve mentioned being tired of the sample based stuff and the need to change your song writing process and sound by incorporating different instruments…

Panda Bear: Yeah, it’s going pretty good. It’s been a long process. I’ve thought about it for a long time while we were doing the Merriweather stuff, so I had a long gestation process in my mind but only really started cracking on it in September. It’s kind of scary doing something totally different, like I’ve been working in a sampler zone for five or six years now. It definitely feels like a new zone, its scary but also exciting as well.

I guess it’s liberating because you’re forced to approach it differently, what sort of sounds and instruments are you exploring?

The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. It’s not live instrumentation, I’ve been playing guitar but I feed it through the same thing that the sequences are on. It’s a very electronic sound and very voice heavy. A simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing. Really there are only two or three elements to every song. It’s pretty raw sounding for better for worse.

What do you see as the main difference between what you’re writing now and Person Pitch?

The tone is a lot darker and it sounds sort of dramatic or romantic to me. But I’m in still in the thick of the thing so it’s really tough to be objective at this point. So I have no idea, but hopefully people like it. I hope its good.

Read the entire interview: Panda Bear Talks New Solo Album

With any luck we can hope to hear the new album sometime in 2010. The only constant with anything Animal Collective related is change, and they have yet to steer their listeners wrong. Until then, keep an eye out for Animal Collective’s upcoming EP, Fall Be Kind, set to be released December 8, 2009 on Domino.

Jack Ruby Presents

Many great bands come and go in Oregon, but there may be none more sincere in their intentions than Jack Ruby Presents, a self described “resurgence folk” band out of McMinnville. The band has performed a handful of shows in Oregon and Sitka, Alaska.

Hughey had this to say of the coming tour dates: “We’re really excited! I’m going to bed and getting that kid on Christmas Eve kind of feeling. It’s our first tour. We’ve played a lot of shows over the last couple years, but it’s cool for us to be able to play so many nights in a row.”

The band begins their road show this Friday, November 20^th with a televised performance at Oregon State University. The following night they head south for the California leg of their tour.

“It’s really exciting to take it somewhere else. We’ve never played in California and that brings a hope and excitement that maybe people elsewhere will be interested in what we’re trying to say,” Hughey said. “It’s going to be nice to really work on our sound, just go every day and be able to say, ‘You know that worked really well last night.’ And then just do that. We won’t have to wait two weeks to apply it.”

In addition to the tour, the band is in the beginning stages of recording and plans to have their debut full-length album out in spring of 2010 on Homeskillet Records (Sitka, Alaska), where they signed in the spring of 2007.

Here are the complete tour dates.