Fuel/Friends Chapel Session #17: Typhoon

Let’s be absolutely clear about this: the first moment I ever heard the music of Typhoon, in the same month I recorded my first chapel session, I desperately wanted them all in there in my little cathedral to reverberate their expansive, yell-out-loud, massively melodic symphonies of songs all around me and my microphones. Almost a year to that March day, they did. And this session is everything that any of us could have hoped it would be.

One of Typhoon’s strengths and glories is all the people that this Portland band makes good use of. There are eleven members of the band, and probably twenty instruments played among them. They also have two drummers, which is essentially the best idea I can think of. Kyle and I discussed how he is the primary songwriter, which lends a continuously-wending feel to all of their songs, but also how each addition of another musician’s coloring and shading into the song helps make them come alive. It was joyful to hear them fill that space.

You had to peel me up off the floor multiple times during the recording of this session, what with all those yelling-together crescendos that felt like one of those chest saws they use in open heart surgery. Only one of these songs (“CPR – Claws Part 2″) has been on an official record; the other three are new or unreleased. “Common Sentiments” will be on their upcoming album that they just spent a month recording on Pendarvis Farms outside of Portland, while “Pain, love” is even newer, and is slated for the album after this next one.

I’ve tried to write about each individual track in this session, but maybe because of the coherence of their music, it all just keeps jostling and nestling around each other and I can’t untangle it into discrete parts. Just do yourself a wonderful favor and put the whole session on continuous loop, like I’ve been doing nonstop lately in these weeks I’ve been in Portland.

Their music was made for this setting. Come, listen.

FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION: TYPHOON
MARCH 20, 2012

Pain, love

And to get the whole thing…

ZIP FILE: TYPHOON CHAPEL SESSION

[audio by the wonderful guys at Blank Tape Records, and on this one, also by the terrific Paul Laxer, Typhoon’s sound guy for their records and the road. Thanks, Paul!]