Viva Voce play live on Drinking From Puddles !!
Wednesday, June 24th - 8pm-11pm
"At this spring's SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, Viva Voce frontman Kevin Robinson surveyed the dense crowd before him with a smirk on his face. "Are y'all blogging this (show)?" he asked, noting the army of texters staring into their devices as the band took a break between songs. "It's like you're guests in my kitchen and I'm the chef: I just want you to eat the food!" This old-school passion for the music, and nothing but, touches every aspect of the fourth full-length album from the husband-and-wife team of Robinson and singer/guitarist Anita Robinson.
"Rose City" is a paean to their adopted hometown that suits the former Southerners to a T. Home-recorded in the couple's newly constructed home studio, the album is immediate and energetic, a mix of angles, melodies and beats that's a reflection of Viva Voce's nearly nonstop touring since releasing 2006's "Get Yr Blood Sucked Out." What's emerged at the end of this constant gigging is an expanded lineup (drummer Evan Railton and singer/guitarist Corrina Repp have joined the Robinsons' two-person basement-rock party) and a sound uniquely their own. Anita Robinson essentially is Jimmy Page, a talented guitarist whose ability to bounce between light and shade infuses songs such as the woozy "Devotion" and spaghetti-western ballad "Red Letter Day" with a depth rarely heard among their peers. "I wanna go back where it's gray and green, and the protest songs have tambourines," she sings on the title track, perhaps the most vivid love letter to our hometown since Elliott Smith's "Rose Parade." Viva Voce emerges here as one of the bustling Portland music scene's leading lights, its latest album being a welcome addition to a year rich with great local releases."--by Corey duBrowa, Special to The Oregonian