LIVE WIRE: A one-woman show that blows.

(No one seemed particularly concerned that Khaela would intermittently pet her imaginary unicorn friend between songs. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

The Blow is Portland, Oregon-based electro-pop artist Khaela Maricich; or at the very least, it was when I saw her at St. James Hall last Thursday. Back in 2006 when Paper Television was being recorded, Khaela had the musical mixmaster expertise of Jona Bechtolt of YACHT behind her, ensuring that the deceptively simple hey-boy, why-you-didn't-call-me lovey-doveyness of her choruses didn't end up sounding like so much other teeniebopper shit on the airwaves. Instead of the formulaic cookie-cutter melodies we've come to associate with choruses like Khaela's, Bechtolt was able to inseminate her words with a glitch-hop punch, allowing each song to mutate into a musical genre bastard child that could just as easily find its way onto a 13-year-old girl's iPod as a European hipster dance floor. It's also worth mentioning that Khaela actually puts effort into her lyrics, even though that gets overshadowed somewhat by Bechtolt's contributions to the album. Some of her lines are sheer poetry: "Your depths made a pressure that punctured my works / And all your fluids couldn't tolerate the force of my thirst / I love the place where we shared our tiny grace / But because it's real doesn't mean it's gonna work". The Blow sounds simple, but there's a very literate, very intelligent sense of whimsy hovering just below the surface.

Khaela's live show is something to behold as well. Before Paper Television, The Blow was very much a solo project, and thanks to years and years of having to perform solo, Khaela's as comfortable alone onstage as a pig in poop, despite Bechtolt being long gone. Looking a bit like a down-on-her-luck soccer mom prone to pounding back the cooking sherry, she wandered out onto a bare stage following a particularly troubled Secret Mommy set and, into the silence, began an a cappella rendition of "The Big U". The backing track kicked in shortly after, pounding and echoing off the walls of what was normally a spare chapel and with that, we readied ourselves for a highly-energetic one-woman show. 

Everyone's seen Napoleon Dynamite, right? You know that scene at the end when Napoleon feels the need to prove his worth and figures that there's no better way of doing that than by flailing around like a ballet dancer getting an enema? That's sort of like what was going on here. During the instrumental breakdowns of crowd pleasers like "Pile of Gold" and "Pardon Me", Khaela's drunken-white-girl brand of uncoordinated thrusting had the audience laughing as much as grooving. Finishing on "Parentheses" and "True Affection", she toned down the wackiness and for once, let her music speak for itself, which may just be what she'd needed to do all along.

Ultimately though, I've been listening to too much of this indie-pop dancey crap lately. For those of you who are thinking about checking out The Blow, be forewarned: Like real blow, The Blow is a drug best taken in small doses.