The Purrs On Life On The Road & Loneliness In Outer-Space

The Purrs play the Blue Moon Tavern, 712 NE 45th St., tonight, with Spanish for 100 and Radioshark, starting at 10 p.m. $5 at the door, 21+.

When I got the press release for The Purrs' last album, Amused, Confused and More Bad News, it included a small picture of a man passed out on some gear outside a club in the middle of the night. I was curious about it, so when I sat down with the band Tuesday night in Moe Bar, before their opening set for The Blakes, I asked about it.

"That was in front of Local 506 in Chapel Hill on tour," their lead singer Jima--who happens to be the guy in the picture--admitted. "After the show we went to this other place down the street called the Cavern, in the same town, and got super fucking drunk..."

"They got really drunk," interjected lead guitarist Jason Milne, gesturing to Jima and their drummer, Craig Keller, "and the show was over, and they were kicking us all out together, and I was trying to call them but they were in a cavern, so they couldn't get any reception. And so they didn't come to the van."

"When we got back we were getting the evil eye from everybody because we had abandoned our team-mates, and then I passed out. In the street." Jima paused. "Somebody brought me a futon. I didn't deserve that."

Life of the road, playing shows, and generally burning yourself out is one of the main themes Jima's songs explore. The band is marking its ten-year anniversary this winter, so they have plenty of experience to draw from. "You write what you know," he said with an apologetic chuckle.

The Purrs first made a splash in the local scene with their 2005 debut LP, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, that felt almost willfully out-of-step with the rest of Seattle music. While most bands garnering attention were either punk, 80's redux, or indie rock in the vein of Death Cab, The Purrs were an odd amalgam of Britpop and psychedelic rock. The band can rock hard, but the drive comes from the rhythm and bass work--Jima plays his bass like a punk rock rhythm guitarist freeing up the guitarists to add color with layers of lush, reverb-heavy guitar. Songs like "Taste of Monday" and "Loose Talk" got regular play on KEXP and stood out for their ability to rock while being a little restrained at the same time.

The band typically gets labeled as "psychedelic" or "post-psychedelic" rock, though that doesn't really do the songwriting justice, which usually leans towards catchy, hooky rock songs. The band did start out more in the chill-stoner vein, though.

"I dug through some old CDs last month, and I found some old recordings of us when we were playing in 2002, 2003, and I mean, it was like 15-minute song, 10-minute song, another 15-minute song. I mean, we did a lot of droning things," said Milne.

"I used to say, we'd get in four songs then leave!" Jima responded, laughing.

Since their first album, the band has delivered two new records, The Chemicals That Keep Us Together (2007) and Amused, which dropped this last August. Over time, the band has toned down some of the more baroque elements they used on the first record, which featured a lot of complex intros and some odd instrumentation that rarely made to concert. At the same time, Jima's songwriting has grown more accessible and direct. "Chemicals for Me," from The Chemicals That Keep Us Together, which also saw play on KEXP, was almost anthemic. But they've generally stuck to the formula of rich, spacey guitars over a solid rock rhythm that sets them apart.

"I think there's a common approach we have for a lot of the songs," explained Milne. "We bring in the songs, we make sure they're arranged well, and they have the hooks. But I think one thing we all conscious about is not getting too 'busy' in what we're doing, having an approach where each instrument has a layer on top of it."

Bob, their new rhythm guitarist who joined the band for Amused (having day jobs, the band can sometimes be less than forthcoming with last names), added: "I think another factor is that because we're recording it ourselves, we're not needing to go into the studio and lay down all our tracks in a week. And when we do our individual tracks, Jim's sitting there with us, sometimes it's just each of us individually with Jim, and we think about all these parts. We listen to what everybody else is doing, we listen to our parts, we do it over again, and then we think we get it and we do it over again, and it's being shaped. The tracks that end up released are just a subset of what we recorded. We might have six or seven guitar tracks recorded, and only two of them make it on the album."

"The Outpost," an odd sci-fi themed exploration of abandonment (Jima's other big theme) exemplifies the approach. There's a long bridge in the song in which Bob and Milne trade off radical guitar sounds, Bob's Telecaster warbling through a phaser or flange at high oscillation, followed by Milne's Jaguar screaming. The sounds are extreme, but the effect is actually sort of pretty, and the heavy reverb adds a certain space to the sound, capturing the sense of being alone that Jima's lyrics are expressing.

"Yeah, we had to turn up his amp really loud" to achieve the right tone while recording, Jima explained, "and our neighbor shut us down one day. He comes over and he's like, 'I can't take that sound anymore,' because we were just recording this screaming for four hours. And his wife had just died the week before, so we took a two-week break when that happened just to let him heal."

Currently, The Purrs are slowly starting work on putting together another three or four songs for an EP they plan to release in the spring, before starting work on their next record. In the interim, they're playing locally and taking a brief trip to New York later this month to play CMJ on October 21.