Kaki King - Wonder Ballroom, Portland OR 10/21/08

Oh, man. This lady is just so fucking great. Whether she's doing acoustic instrumental stuff, making ethereal stuff with vocals, or just rocking out, she does whatever she chooses to do much better than someone else in the same position would be able to. As she usually does, she took to the stage solo and began "Bone chaos in the castle" as the rest of her band came in and began playing one by one. I made sure to get a good spot so I could watch her ten dainty fingers bombastically crushing and wrestling the strings into making some of the most original sounds to come from a guitar in years. One thing I hadn't noticed before is her use of the palm-bopping thumb-slapping chicken-pick. How the fuck do you even coordinate that? I don't remember exactly what the set list was, but I'll try:

Bone Chaos in the Castle
So much for so little
Life being what it is
Sad American
Goby
Playing with pink noise (she said this one was in the contract)
Jessica
Pull me out alive ("this is a song about spies!")
You don't have to be afraid
Open mouth
Saving days in a frozen head
Montreal
2 o'clock
Can anyone who's heard this music be a bad person?

and of course, a Bubonix cover. This time it was "Dogs and horses".

Her between song banter is always fucking great. She introduced "2 o'clock" as "a song about what a complete dickhead I am" and "so much for so little" she said was a question both posed and answered in Portland. Yay. This town loves her, and she loves it back, which is pretty cool.
Obviously to anyone who's heard her phalanges bring her many guitars to their knees, she does shit almost no one else does or can, and that the lauded "heroes" of the instrument scratch their heads over and give up trying. that makes for a couple of pretty rad hours of entertainment. Her bandmates deserve some props too, though. There were moments where the drummer absolutely channeled Stu Copeland. The keyboard/bass guy did some really nifty and well placed prog-style filter sweeps. The other guitarist (whom I kind of feel bad for, playing a guitar next to Ms. King night after night) makes ambient noises as well as anyone has with a guitar. And there was a wonderful moment during "You don't have to be afraid" when the stereo set up in the venue did something I've never experienced at a live show before: I got different sounds coming in each ear. They were airy, tinkly sounds and it was like Kaki sucked the crowd into a freshly shaken snow globe. It was really, really cool. Then she topped it off with a perfectly stupid cover song and retreated backstage. The only thing missing tonight was the lap steel. Can't have it all, I guess. Next up were the Mountain Goats, but I'm not really a fan, so I headed home to smoke and take care of a couple of things before I headed back. I headed back because Kaki and the Goats put out an EP together, so it was pretty obvious she'd be taking the stage again. I got back 2 mediocre songs before she did. She came out and played the first of the joint songs, which was good guitarwise but otherwise blah. Then a Morrissey cover, then the lap steel came out and made the craziest sounds I've heard come from strings ever. Period. And I go out of my way to find people who make stringed instruments sound weird. It was pure lovely space-rock, and then she went away. So I did too.