Killingsworth
Young Fresh Fellows’ Scott McCaughey refuses to be slowed by the practical aspects of the music business. The 2009 Minus 5 release, *Killingsworth*, named after a thoroughfare that borders Northeast Portland, Oregon’s Alberta Arts District, was released simultaneously with the Fellows’ album *I Think This Is*. McCaughey’s voluminous collection of friends soldier in and out. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck finds his 12-string. John Moen (Dharma Bums, Jicks, Decemberists) supports on multiple instruments and the Posies’ Ken Stringfellow wanders among the proceedings. The result is an understandably loose and casual affair that sounds like a campfire singalong without the campfire. “Scott Walker’s Fault” includes a melody swiped from Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” “Big Beat Up Moon” begins with a swaggering acoustic guitar augmented by spiky electric intrusions. “Ambulance Dancehall” veers from Dylanesque folk to ‘60s girl group pop. “Gash In the Cocoon” and “Tonight You’re Buying Me a Drink, Bub” throw in a pedal steel for a tilt towards alt.country.
Killingsworth is an aptly named thoroughfare that borders northeast Portland's "Alberta Arts District", where these songs were primarily conceived and executed. These songs were killed for you. Scott's old buddy John Moen, who has been a Dharma Bum and a Maroon and a Jick, and is now a Decemberist (he is also a human being), wove a noose out of papyrus, and helped lasso his current bandmates and other notables to flesh out the arrangements on a dismal and disturbing array of soon-to-be-classics. The effervescent smokin' drinkin' Little Sue and the four ultra-stylish priestesses once known as the Shee Bee Gees provided welcome feminine counterpoint to the song cycle's wanton depravity (It's not truly a song cycle, nor is it a Richard Strauss tone poem, but the caliber of the material deserves a modicum of pretension). Various members of M. Ward's combo, as well as the very great Norfolk & Western (some of them the same people), played crucial roles in delivering the goods. They were poorly remunerated. Noted novelist and Richmond Fontaine frontispiece Willy Vlautin provided a golden lyrical trampoline, and Timothy Bracy of Mendoza Line fame collaborated on the dance-floor-bound "Dark Hand of Contagion". As ever, Peter Buck put twelve strings or less to optimal use whenever cajoled. Ken Stringfellow sang on a Scandinavian ferry, fully clothed.
Young Fresh Fellows' Scott McCaughey and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck are joined by most of the Decemberists on their latest record of country-rock and Big Star pop.
Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck team up for an eighth album of offbeat lyrical observations, wrapped in alt-country and with the Decemberists helping out.
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The Minus 5 remain relatively obscure, which is astonishing when you consider that past line-ups have included members of Sonic Youth and Wilco, as well as E, Patti Smith, Ben Gibbard and “pretty much everyone else”.