There’s a collision of magnitude — big sounds, in hollowed spaces — when We Thought There’d Be More People Here, The Purrs’s live, 20th-anniversary album kicks off.
A year ago, I couldn’t have forced myself to sit through a live track (besides The Chicks and Sheryl Crow’s live rendition of “Strong Enough”), let alone a live album. Growing up in Oregon pretty much guarantees hearing over 15 hours of live Grateful Dead jam sessions every week. Cut to my adolescent revolt — finding out about noise-canceling headphones and blaring Avril Lavigne’s Let Go 24/7. (Don’t take it too personally Moose Almighty; I still loved your Talking Tracks session.) But despite my loathing for live albums, listening to We Thought There’d Be More People Here gave me a sentimental affinity for the background noises of a crowded bar and cheesy stage banter, so familiar (but far away) it’s practically a lullaby. There’s something poetic about a live album released in an era without live music — like looking at a scrapbook of moments gone by. I can almost feel the sweat from the crowd and the stick of a spilled Rainer under my shoe when I lose myself in the album’s frequent guitar distortions.
We Thought There’d Be More People Here (released May 7) came into my life while I was ambitiously and optimistically calculating the next time I’d be able to see (or be comfortable seeing) a live show. From the first track, it’s obvious that this sound is too big to live in the box where Jason Milne, tonal guitarist for the group, found the recordings during the second week of COVID-19 lockdowns. At times, the drums are so loud they drown out the vocals, but as with all live shows at smaller venues — or all live shows that we thought there’d be more people at — I didn’t come for perfection; I came for the experience.
Recorded at venues in and around Seattle (like The Crocodile and Skylark Cafe) between 2002-2014, this album is sonically authentic, riddled with purity only heard in a bar somewhere. So grab a stiff glass of whiskey, lay down on your fuzziest rug (a crowded bar may not be an option right now, so you might as well get comfy), and buckle up for all 14 tracks of We Thought There’d Be More People Here.
Opening track “Get Me Through It” stays deliberately slow (but heavy) with sparse power chords filling the emptiness, while vocalist and bassist Jima Antonio sings and screams, “Get me through it.” In a lyric sheet note Antonio wrote, “In any case, I am doing a lot of wailing on this one. I wish someone would have told me to dial it down…” For me, it was just enough — an intimate moment caught on tape.
After the wail-o-rama of “Get Me Through It” fades out, the album traverses through The Purrs’s Third-Eye-Blind-(but make it heavy)-meets-the-Violent-Femmes discography, including the band’s most played track, “Loose Talk.” “American as Apple Pie” does more for me, though, set into motion with the rhythmic drumming of Dusty Haze.
Antonio’s raspy vocals come in with, “Whiskey from a bottle but I still feel / Nothing matters, nothing is real.” The instrumentation is buoyant, with two guitars, bass, drums, and backup vocals that lighten the track. Halfway through, the guitars switch from the reverb-laden slow-burn riffs characteristic of grunge to driving, distorted fills that scream American anthem rock. The Purrs skirt the edges of many genres in short, distilled bursts in this live version. They’re the type of sonic bombshells only released on live audiences, and it makes me giddy listening to it.
Twelfth track “Disconnected” intros on cosmic tonal guitar by Milne. The song structure is disjunctive, with jam-band-esque rambling riffs reminiscent of 90s psychedelic rock. At just over eight minutes, most of this track is occupied by musical tangents or, as Antonio noted in the lyric sheet, “noise sculptures.” Refreshingly reminiscent of live music, lyrics dapple the horizon rather than driving the sound. Sonic trauma from an overload of Grateful Dead jam sessions be damned — this track is gritty and deliberate in its instrumentation. It’s a *jam* I can get behind.
I have a lingering desire to be swept up in a room of tightly packed bodies colliding to the last track, “Cracked Head.” The galloping punk guitar will have you bopping your head at a pace you’re out of practice for. Antonio’s lyrics give off a gritty Jonathan Richmond vibe as he sings, “Coming home one night from a nowhere bar / Hanging out by the taxi stand / Like a long white ghost that’s a little charred / That’s when I noticed all the holes in her hand.” The lyrics seem like an ode to the death of a Seattle we knew — or the ability for artists to live in a city with rapidly rising rents due to a tech boom — from a band that has witnessed the city changing over the past 20 years (their band bio states, “The Purrs don’t want you to know exactly how long they’ve been around,” but they’ve let the cat out of the bag with this 20th-anniversary release).
Since their formation, The Purrs have seen several iterations, helmed by Antonio and Milne. Liz Herrin (rhythm guitar and backup vocals) joined the group in 2010, and Dusty Haze (drummer and backup vocals) joined in 2015. They’ve released six full-length albums, starting with their self-titled debut in 2006, and among the heaps of canceled plans over the past year, The Purrs were demoing for a new album and planning a tour for their 20th anniversary.
Like The Purrs, many of us have changed course this year, moving our lives online to whatever extent possible. In that time, I’ve grown sick of polished Instagram feeds, perfectly mixed and mastered music, and live streams that don’t fill the void left by not being able to see live music. I’m warming up to the idea of live albums (at least until I get to see a show), but there are still many things a live album can’t do: Live albums can’t transport you to the time where we bumped into each other on the dance floor. They can’t bring back that first breath of cold air after leaving the tiny, crowded bar on a rainy evening in Seattle. They can’t replace being in the room the nights they were recorded. We Thought There’d Be More People Here will do for now, but it isn’t enough. So I’m coming for The Purrs’s real-life grungy 90’s psych-rock guitar distortions, musical tangents, and cheesy stage banter as soon as I can. For now, find me on my fuzzy rug with a glass of whiskey.
Comments