Valet - Portland's Matriarch

Honey Owens is a leading figure in Portland's thriving avant-rock community. With her partner Adam Forkner (the man behind the White Rainbows project, as well as a former member of the little-known but seminal Yume Bitsu), she effectively forms one of the most interesting couples in Oregon's wonderfully unhinged indie scene. The two, besides owning the small label Yarnlazer, team up with Paul Dickow and Brian Foote (both former Fontanelle members) to form Nudge, a band that blends, with bold nonchalance, lounge-flavored electronics shot through with funky undertones, buoyed by mesmerizing Afro-tinged expansions. Four years of energetic chemistry showcased across three excellent releases, the third of which, "Cached", stands out without a doubt: a sinuous coagulation of dance music and Kranky-style third-worldism. In 2007 she threw herself with great enthusiasm into Dark Yoga, a newborn Portland band, a sort of neo-psychedelic commune locked in permanent trance.

Her well-known ties to Jackie O'Motherfucker, of whom she has been an on-and-off member, contributing heavily to the creation of works like "Flags of the Sacred Harpnon", are just further proof of her talent's prolific nature, equally capable of flitting freely over anachronistic free-jazz carpets alongside an (ever more possessed) Tom Greenwood, or of letting loose over seemingly lounge-based foundations (!) (see the paths taken with the aforementioned Nudge). The heterogeneity of these experiences reaches its ideal unison in her delicate solo project, under the alias Valet. A percussive magma charged with sensuality, at times propelled by possessed sighs of acute ergotism.

Two albums to her name so far, showcasing her more lysergic side. The Velvet-indebted psychedelia of Roy Montgomery's Dadamah and today's stars-and-stripes avant rock, so fashionable in recent years, collide on a full-moon night, somewhere between Opal-like echoes and acoustic regressions in opposition, worthy of Ash Ra Tempel's "Starring Rosi". Owens' solo insights are captivating, illuminating by contrast the darkest nights, charting paths that can be disorienting, suddenly evoking Teutonic kraut, or lulling us through a rock sacredness that is anything but buried. The attitude is to emphasize the whole context by settling into a series of hypnotic scales.

The clear intention to blend pseudo-depressed vocals with an anxious groove shows signs of a stylistic search in keeping with the pioneering instincts of the Kranky stable. One might think of the same twisted anathemas of To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie, freed from that powerful cathartic defragmentation that weighs down their rhythm section. Torment and prayer, hope and disillusion, Angel and Harpy, the firstborn of a hypothetical love between Cecrops and a Diana overcome by passion. Valet is synonymous with lysergic avant-garde, at once damnation and blessing. Under this moniker, the Portland girl vents her inner anxieties, breaking the chains of the past, keeping them in the same suitcase where all her new obsessions now lie.

A path taken alone, with (almost) no help from anyone, emulating the tormented preachers of acid-folk's golden age. Recorded in the first six months of 2006, Blood Is Clean is a work of dark psychedelia, in which lysergic disorientation is guaranteed throughout by the combined use of electronics and high-voltage distorted acoustics.

Honey Owens literally plays everything. If nothing else, her primary intent is to yield to no outside influence, to listen only to the regressive inlay of her own feelings, perhaps isolating herself among the trees, where the buzz of an unidentified insect, combined with the glow of the moon, can inspire a dark dance, amid crescendoing bongos, rock spirituality, sudden discharges of electronic sheet-metal noise thrown to the ground without warning, as enveloping as they are grating in their circular din.

“My blood is clean/ But the devil’s in me” sings Owens, almost subdued, aware of her own powerlessness against the daily calls of an unwanted (but necessary) denial of a life free of selfishness. Hers is an inner isolation that at times seems almost indispensable, aimed at reaping the fruits of an innate idiosyncrasy toward the industrial frenzy of modern society.

A catharsis of lysergic rustling, often reaching a notable level of psychedelic saturation. Then again, the fruit is still unripe, there's a dull green to be found in a (dis)quieted urge to grind everything up (and quickly) in the same cauldron. It's simply the excessive eagerness of a woman who suddenly finds herself in her most natural habitat, as if the past had suppressed (in small part) the deepest essence of her artistic sensibility. Certainly, Owens has always trodden avant-rock paths, psychotic in their unfolding/flowing, at times scattered in their convoluted, intellectualized articulation. Yet our muse has never attempted to stage a ritual this intimate - this inspired isolation felt necessary (luckily for us), aimed at a clear-eyed view of the most hidden side of her compositional ability. With Valet the mask comes off, slipping away little by little; the time has come to show the rest of the indie circuit the potential she's never fully unleashed.

Access to the new wardrobe is merely postponed: just over a year later, Kranky doesn't let the chance slip and hands her the keys to the recording studio. In Naked Acid, her second effort, the metamorphosis is complete. A slow procession of drums, a flutter of crystals in celebration, timid chords wrenched from her own soul. It all begins in unison, from the origin: man (Adrian Orange) - woman (Honey Owens), ("We Went Here"). Everything is clear: the long night is finally behind us. Sunlight begins to warm the bark of the trees, gently, slipping like a laser through the branches of the forest. The dreamy psychedelia of Dadamah's "Too Hot To Dry" is only brushed against, yielded to the graces of a Raidne gripped by orgasm. A routine of unstable rhythms, of venomous plectrums pushing her elsewhere ("Fuck It"). An exotic stasis meant to soothe primitive instincts. A sonic petrification of regressed anxieties is underway. Owens uses sparse instrumentation, doesn't explore new frontiers, simply sits at the edge of a stream - the hypnosis is all in her strings, in her possessed singing, her call has no time, no trend.

The hope for the future is that this slow procession of intent, softened by a more linear style, won't change course too much. The greater urgency is that the constructive specter of a remote, lysergic view of things shouldn't be set aside, and that Owens keeps behaving like a Yoni resurrected through the web's signals, revitalized by this new, captivating hypnotic poetics.

Just a few months after Naked Acid, Honey Owens resurfaces with three long, individual jam sessions of lysergic music at a high Pentothal dosage. Too bad that the effect, undeniably anesthetic, is this time less piercing, and the resulting dream leaves little room for imagination. Still, the EP False Face Society (2009) picks up the same principles as the previous two LPs, built on the same acoustic regressions in opposition, and in it Owens traces the same path of the recent past, made of electronic swarms meant to stage a synthesized Indian mantra, the core element of her artistic intent. If anything, the difference lies entirely in the final result, which is mediocre and lacking her trademark ethereal, blues-tinged fluidity. The opening track, "Angel Can't Stop", is a 16-minute pseudo-spatial ride in the vein of Froese-Franke-Baumann, propped up by a technoid beat poorly aligned with the rest of the thematic thread. "Dealer vs Ocean" is even less striking, its undulations wandering wrapped in corrosive, tedious echoes. The fine velvet curtain opens again only with the drums of "Rainbow", where the ex-Jackie O'Motherfucker reignites that fire of passion in permanent exotic stasis. But it's really too little for a poet of her caliber.

Six years after her last effort, Owens returns with a new LP, Nature. Somewhat surprisingly, the Portland musician catches everyone off guard with a work containing elements worthy of the slow-core of the good old days. The fiery spirits of the past are now just a distant memory, and that's clear from the very first notes. Nightmares and pains have been comfortably tucked away in a drawer. Thus emerge tracks like the opening "Sunday" and "Nature". A few chords, a voice that seems to emerge from the clouds, and accessible melodic lines signaling the attainment of a more-than-dormant inner calm. The album is ruled by a lulling, sedative hypnosis that reaches its anesthetic peak on the instrumental "Clouds", through a very faint background choir, a vaguely measured rhythm and a light acoustic breeze that sweeps away everything and its opposite. At times, it feels like finding oneself before a subdued Ash Ra Tempel on the secondary "Starring Rosi".

However, this continuous harmonic suspension only partly captivates, and one often finds oneself dealing with boredom, especially given the absence of truly memorable melodies that could in some way break away - and free us - from the mere initial rocking motion. Ultimately, with Nature Honey Owens has only found her own peace of mind, repeatedly losing the thread of a sonic tangle that seems overly imperceptible.

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