Portland Cello Project

When i moved to portland last summer, i heard from several sources that the Portland Cello Project cd was hella good, and based on the fact that i love a) portland and b) cellos, i bought it. the album starts right off with one of the most killer upbeat tracks "beat" that just was instantly nostalgic to me of happy summer-times activities and memories, and i used that song for this little moped rally video i put together last year.

The music throughout the album is... i would describe it as refreshing. There are a ton of creative kids out there who have lots of passion but maybe lack on the ability when it comes to music (just like me), so you hear lots of projects come out that sound really promising, or have good ideas or good moments, but at the end of the day you can lump them in with other things you've heard and they aren't outstanding. PCP is DIFFERENT. its already hard enough to find people who are into really good music and play a good cello, what to speak of up to 12 of them!!! its also really hard to find a great singer, male or female, and we all know how the vocals can seriously make or break a band. well they collaborated with justin power and Thao who both sing flowingly smooth and gentle throughout the album.

So what i'm trying to say is the musicianship is incredibly sound on every performers part, beginning to end. The album definitely has low points, i always skip "geography" for instance with its possibly awkward part changes and Thao electing to do cranberries-zombie-style yodels for once on the album, no thanks.

what i like about the album is all the different songs grew on me. There would be two or three that would really stand out, then i'd switch to other ones that i'd play all the time... I feel like it will stand the test of time.

The last song I got around to getting stuck in my head constantly for a month was appropriately the last song on the album, "travel", leading me to believe it wasn't an accident that they placed it there. This is one of those songs that is so beautiful, so sweet, such moving lyrics, how can anyone NOT like it?

The best video of them i found online was of that very song, and this performance is fantastic. you can see some of that musicianship im talking about in watching Justin's ease of fingerpicking the ukulele and being perfectly on key singing live. i'll never get tired of this video.