“Caterpillar Playground”
from the album Apple’s Acre
2009
iTunes
How many more terrific bands can plausibly call Portland home? The question is hardly a hypothetical one: Stumptown residents have grown casual about the volume of quality new music spilling out of our fair city, and joining recent exports such as Blitzen Trapper, Alela Diane, and The Builders and the Butchers comes yet another surprising musical discovery: Nurses.
The group is longtime best friends and musical partners Aaron Chapman and John Bowers, and their sophomore full-length album, Apple’s Acre, finds the pair relocating to Portland after spending their school years in Idaho (plus a short stint in San Diego). Following their 2007 debut, Hangin’ Nothin’ But Our Hands Down, the group shed two of its members but has hardly suffered sonically for that decision.
Apple’s Acre proves to be a whimsical summertime tour of infinity and beyond, with small-scale songs that wrap big-time hooks around whistled bridges (once “Caterpillar Playground” enters your memory bank, good luck getting it out again) or the sort of primitive percussion that falls one snare short of a full drum kit (“Technicolor,” “Man at Arms”).
Other songs betray a certain Beach Boys influence — the album’s title track and the insanely catchy “Lita” could both pass as outtakes from Brian Wilson’s legendarily bittersweet symphony, Smile. Still others wink at other similarly minded weird-pop purveyors like Flaming Lips (“Bright Ideas”) but are quick to establish independent identities, flying their freak flag as proudly as possible.
Nurses offer art cum psych rock as their stock in trade and find themselves in fine company, aligned with a town, time and place that’s perfectly suited to their slightly bent but never less than charming muse.