The song “Concerning Spectral Pinching” off of the debut self-titled album from Portland’s Hook & Anchor became one of my favorite songs of the summer. It neatly shows off the band’s chops at both country and rock, and showcases Kati Claborn’s husky, gutsy alto. It’s also a nifty 21st Century answer song of sorts; it starts off with a lilting, fiddle-laden verse that steals the melody from the old country chestnut “The Tennessee Waltz,” then quickly morphs into an ass-kicking country rocker about romantic revenge and its consequences.
This album has been a grower for me and I suspect it’ll stick around for a while. Hook & Anchor is a Portland roots music supergroup of sorts. Claborn, who plays banjo and guitar, is a member of Portland alt-folkers Blind Pilot, Clampitt (electric guitar and pedal steel) has played under a number of nameplates including Clampitt, Power of County and Gaddis & Buck. They rounded up Gabrielle Macrae of the Portland old-time band Macrae Sisters (on banjo, fiddle and guitar) and fellow members of Blind Pilot Luke Ydstie on bass and piano, and Ryan Dobrowski on drums. All of them can carry a tune, too.
That shows up most clearly on the multi-part harmonies of the gospel-inflected “Hammer,” in which, well, one of the guys, sings lines like “I want to die with a hammer in my hand” to minimal accompaniment of just piano. The album was recorded mostly live in Portland’s famed Type Foundry analog studio, and with Type Foundry’s Adam Selzer at the controls, those lovely vocals come through loud and clear. Selzer, a member of harmony-heavy Alialujah Choir and producer of such acts as The Decemberists and M. Ward, really knows how to put a group like this on record.
That excursion into gospel aside, Hook & Anchor mostly swings comfortably between solid country-folk and contemporary indie-folk.
The former includes the opening track “Famously Easy,” “Spectral Pincing,” the fiddle-heavy “Hard Times,” and her dark ballad “Blackbird.” The latter includes the banjo-driven “Wild Wind” and Claborn’s modern update of the American folk standard “Buffalo Gal” on her song called “The Light Of The Moon”; the soulful, piano-driven “Hazel Dell”; the very dark “No It’s Not”; and a mostly spare update of the late Utah Phillips’s folk gem “Rock Salt And Nails.” Claborn really nails this one with her powerful vocal, and the accompaniment of ukulele, upright bass and organ in the opening verses are perfect. (Major props to Ydstie for his beautiful bass line.) The song erupts into a full-band climax for the final couple of verses, and Macrae plays some fine fiddle on this part. It’s the last track, a great finish to a solid album.
(Jealous Butcher/Woodphone, 2014)
[2026 update: Hook & Anchor continues to make music as a trio called The Hackles out of Astoria, Ore. Sadly, Type Foundry closed its doors in 2020 after more than 20 years of independent recording in Portland.]
