Sunday, November 14, 2004

The Prids



Portland, Oregon's The Prids are a group of who've been busy in that corner of North America for a number of years penning world-shaking, sweeping songs with equal parts post-punk, new-wave and shoegazing allusions. The easiest and more obvious points of reference are Wire, My Bloody Valentine and Echo & The Bunnymen (ubiquitiously), but there's something a little more earnest and valuable than PoMo pastiche going on here, evident in a couple of the songs that I'll post below.

When I lived in Victoria, I heard of the Prids thanks to Jack Duckworth - I was playing in a band called Ghosts at the time and he invited us over to play with The Prids and his group, A Luna Red at the Pic Pub in Vancouver. The Prids had brought along an affable Chicagoan with a apple green Dodge Charger who spoke knowledgeably of the history of the American twenty-five cent piece, and they played a sparkling and shimmering set, complete with epileptic-fit inducing light-show. The next time I saw them, my friend Dan and I put a show on for them in Victoria, and their light-show and amplifiers blew the fuses at Logan's, cutting their set short.

The Prids - Contact.mp3 from the Love Zero EP.
The Prids - Love Zero.mp3 from the Love Zero EP.


West Coast residents can catch The Prids in Seattle on November 28th, while most East Coasters will have to wait until they fill out the dates around their appearance at the Magnum PR showcase in New York on the 16th of December.

No comments: