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Reviewed for FasterLouder

Back for album number 8, Quasi show no sign of slowing down or watering down their take on indie that embraces power pop, americana and psych influences with opens arms. They are a tricky band to categorise which is of course a good thing for music listeners who like their sounds to be complex and multifarious.

Hailing from Portland, Oregon; Quasi’s members have different musical lives outside the band. Drummer Janet Weiss was behind Sleater Kinney and has since spent time on the drum stool for Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks while singer/guitarist Sam Coombes played with Elliott Smith and has guested over the years with Built To Spill.

These external dalliances provide clues to the combined sound that Quasi produce on American Gong. It is an album that has college rock running through it and it calls up the ghosts of REM, Pavement, Red Kross and The Beatles in equal measures. They can swing from the garage rock-isms of opener Repulsion to the back porch strumming of The Jig Is Up with consummate ease, all the while keeping their sound grounded in just enough grit and distortion to avoid studio polish taking the life out of the songs.

Coombes’ voice is one of those imperfect instruments that wavers as it reaches up high and has that everyman quality whether he is rocking out or trying to perfect a hummable melody. Everything & Nothing At All is power pop personified with piano and Coombes soaking his words in melancholic melodies.

Mid album there is a hint that Quasi are sounding a little too contented and as if recognising that, they unleash two songs that lift the pulse and energise the rest of the record. Bye Bye Blackbird builds into a static storm with sparks flying and colliding with Weiss’ Bonham drumming. It is a glorious explosion of energy that bounces along with a brash boldness that is happy heavy, not dark heavy.

Rockabilly Party reaches the same heights via a different route and is a complete Neil Young & Crazy Horse rip off with its growling riff setting the scene before it heads into White Stripes territory. Thankfully they convert these influences into a photo rather than a facsimile. It is rollicking rather than staid and it works wonderfully.

Across the 11 tracks of American Gong there are psychedelic pop moments aplenty and to some extent they serve to reset the indie compass in 2010. Quasi sweep aside the fey tweeness and artistic shapes that many bands are generating and instead they cut to the point where garage rock, psych pop and americana meet and merge. This is an album without pretension or hidden agendas and while it takes a few listens to absorb its harsher edges it rewards in spades.