Bishop Allen - Live at the Doug Fir Lounge, Portland OR

Another month, another show. A twin header from acidic pop kings, Page France and Bishop Allen. I’d already thieved the poster from the Doug Fir bathroom and pinned it on the back of my office door. It was supposed to be a double dip of a show: another chance to sample the Danielson meets Pedro twee rock of Page France and a first meeting with the Bishop Allen kids. I was wearing my favorite frock. I was drinking mojitos. I was anticipating humming along to something wry and wonderful while dancing around my old lady handbag. No such luck. The Page France bus had apparently breathed its last somewhere outside Arizona and there was to be no post-youth group angst for me tonight. Tickets in hand we decided to take our chances with Bishop Allen anyway.

We arrived halfway through a hastily appointed replacement opener which, with hindsight may very well have been Bishop Allen’s roadie. This guy was amazingly awful. His “act” consisted of thumping a somewhat wobbly Casio balanced atop a Doug Fir patio chair whilst warbling along to a backing track cassette. Imagine our delight upon discovering that this guy not only planned to assume the spirit voice of the late great Johnny Cash whilst stealing his tunes and belting out lyrics about chicken pox but also planned to accompany himself with a Panasonic personal stereo circa 1989. Delight, horror, songs about broken down hatchbacks, shopping carts and IHOP, much stopping of aforementioned Panasonic personal stereo and rifling through cassettes for something appropriate. An experience akin to watching your drunken uncle delivering a wedding speech: I don’t know his name but I know I liked him.

After which I prepared to be disappointed by the severe lack of Page France and found myself kicking my own shins for lack of faith. Bishop Allen were brilliant. I feel like I might have fallen in love. They looked great. They sang their socks off. They beamed like Christmas from the back of the stage. They were bloody marvelous. They may very well be my new minor obsession. The front man is that kid from Mutual Appreciation. He looks like a cross between a younger, squidgier Jason Schwartzman and some kind of cute woodland creature. You want to take him home in your back pocket and feed him baked goods on the back porch. The other singing guy is easily the smiliest person I have ever seen. He looked so happy to be singing in the Doug Fir I can only assume that Jim had personally fixed it for him to be there. The keyboard girl had a killer fringe and a dress like a lamp shade. The bass player was menacing and the drummer drummed. They were the kind of band I’d like to find myself playing with should I be suddenly blessed with the ability to bear rhythm. I’m going to say this and probably regret it instantly and wish to take it back but Bishop Allen sounded somewhat like a sprightly and slightly rockier version of later Belle and Sebastian plus some of their songs were kind of better. (I feel like I’ve just committed treason but they were just that user friendly.)

What a perfect little nugget of a set: a round hour in full, including a three song encore. I know very little of the Bishop Allen back catalog but they opened with “This Same Fire”
which was one of my top tunes back in May and gave me hours of singing pleasure beating up and down the M1 in the dog car. What a great tune and lovely words about burning libraries and ancient Greece and loving someone special an awful lot. Sounds like Stuart Murdoch if he’d been conceived this side of the Atlantic. I also got treated to “Rain” which bops along with the kind of circular dance beat which characterizes the Clap Your Hands sound. “Things Are What You Make of Them” descended into an all crowd sing-along and had me making a mental note to buy a Bishop Allen record before the week was out. There were a few quieter moments. Camera song, “Click, Click, Click” tingles like sherbet on a stick and would probably be over sweet if it wasn’t so desperately catchy. The big-fringed girl abandoned keyboards to sing lead on a song about butterflies: I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a girl who looked like a doily left over from the ’70s. She sounded fake French and I was just fine with that. There was an ambitious and slightly over zealous Creedence cover and a fair amount of ukulele action: everything you’d expect from cute indie kids with big hair and soft faces.

It’s a quirky sound though I hate to label anyone with the Q word: file under B and S, old school Clem Snide, a less tingly Page France, Tilly and the Wall minus the angst-y tap dancing shtick, in short everything I love in a rock and roll band. Gorgeous multi-layered bounce a long vocals, catchy hooks, funny, bittersweet lyrics about pianos and girls in Summer dresses who break your heart and finding yourself out late and young in the back streets of New York. Bishop Allen are the kind of band your friends form and you stupidly underestimate, only to find yourself three months later at the school talent show, surprised by their ability to charm. They should not be underestimated though they’re not as grown up clever as the bands you might normally associate with the New York sound. They sound less sleek, softer, more approachable, a little less terrifying and more like a new boyfriend your mum might actually like. They may well be this year’s candy-coated geniuses of the indie pop underground. I liked Bishop Allen a lot, so did all my Page France deprived friends. After an hour or so listening to them smile along with the music I felt like a happier soul and went skipping home to practice my yo-yo skills.