alleluia it will be gone soon (eternity will smile on me)

Honest Truth – Typhoon

As one of the four readers who have written to me in the last week to recommend that I listen to Typhoon said, “Imagine a band like Arcade Fire, only they actually make good use of having 12 people playing at once.” Typhoon is from Portland and they’ve all just stormed into my life these last few days, leaving a glittering wake.

If junior high orchestra was this fun, you can bet money that I would have joined — everyone playing their hearts out on so many different delectable instruments, all creating this cavalcade of sound and voices that is truly overwhelming. There’s some of the shimmering, redemptive waves of orchestral joy and colossal thumping force that we find to love in Fanfarlo.

I was totally wowed by this video from the Driskill Hotel in Austin last week. It is wonderful how they weave together the last song from their album with the first from their new EP, building into one terrifically expansive song, with the common refrain that both share: “eternity will smile on me…” Singer Kyle Morton’s distinctive voice has an ineffable quality to it of sadness and wisdom and somehow an utterly convincing hope — and what smart lyrics as well. Except you have to watch it all the way through, because it becomes something tremendous.

There are so many of them apparently all living together in a charming house in Portland that I wonder if they’d even notice if I moved in and sang with them in their joyful chorus. They were named one of the best bands in Portland last year, and in the article they talked about all cramming into the van together, and the inordinate amount of mandated cuddling that ensues. “You have to—there’s no room in the van,” Morton laughs. “On the other hand, there’s all your friends. You have a posse, and you never feel scared, you always feel safe.” Their music is the aural equivalent of that today for me.

You can listen to both their full-length album Hunger And Thirst (2010, Tender Loving Empire) as well as their A New Kind of House EP which was just released. Very highly recommended.

They’ve just wrapped up a tour, but are thankfully playing Sasquatch (which I am attending this year for the first time) which makes it easy for me to see them, especially since they just played in Colorado a few days ago and in my post-SXSW haze I didn’t even know about it.

I am extremely excited to see this live.