The winter rain has started in Oregon, but Please Step Out of the Vehicle’s Travis Wiggins doesn’t seem to mind; he’s too busy thinking about the band’s new studio/rehearsal space, upcoming gigs, and the logistics of wrangling nearly a dozen musicians and all their instruments into one space.
“We just started recording for our next record, and it’s going to have tons of weird samples,” he explains from his Portland home, where he has just finished renovating the band’s studio. His excitement is not exactly unwarranted: after nearly four years together as a band, Please Step Out of the Vehicle has just released its debut full-length album, Sleeping Right and the Best in Homeopathic Magic, a psychedelic pop gem tinged with vintage Atari MIDI samples, drum machine riffs, and lo-fi sonic quirks that imbue the album with a certain genre-defying charm. With a heavy slant towards the indie-folk sound, Sleeping Right... has a chameleon-like appeal, at times evoking elements of Pavement, The Shins, and Olivia Tremor Control, while occasionally venturing further afield into rhythmic and experimental instrumental tracks and fuzzed-out exercises in controlled noise. Already the band members seem chock full of ideas for their follow-up, a project that Wiggins is trying to simultaneously oversee and referee.
Wiggins, who serves as the group’s singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist (among other instrumental duties), acknowledges the mixed blessing of heading Please Step Out of the Vehicle — a collective of talented multi-instrumentalists (ten are credited on the album) — in a community like Portland. “There are so many musicians in Portland, people kind of come and go ... it’s really hard to get everyone here and rehearsing,” he muses, noting that Portland’s wealth of bands and musicians creates something of a creative catch-22, since just about everyone is in multiple bands and side projects. Wiggins’ Northeast Portland neighborhood is particularly rife with musical talent: “Every third or fourth house, there’s some awesome band. It’s awesome that everyone [living here] was in band in high school. I lived in the middle of nowhere in West Texas, and no one was like that.” After moving to Portland in 2001, Wiggins met most of his bandmates through sheer circumstance: “We were a whole lot of young kids, and we were just kind of hanging out.” Following the release of a 7-inch and a cassette demo in 2005 (and the subsequent local buzz), the band recorded the bulk of Sleeping Right... on a basement 8-track, only to have its label Lucky Madison send the members in for a full studio session.
For all the logistical headaches however, Please Step Out of the Vehicle has pulled off quite the feat, assembling a veritable orchestra of musicians wielding everything from guitars, basses and drums to glockenspiels, melodicas, lap steels, flutes and Farfisa organs. The band’s rich aural textures, vintage instruments and Wiggins’ esoteric songwriting have frequently drawn comparisons to Jeff Mangum and the works of the Elephant 6 collective. The lyrics from “We Will Go Everywhere (Part 1)“ touch upon the visceral, obsessive quality seen in much of Mangum’s work: “I went to a place / And you were there / You forgot your face / And I could see inside / I could see the tissue / And how your mind works / I was staring into your unblinkable eyes.” Other lyrics and song titles make reference to similarly obtuse material, from life at the molecular level to existential philosophy. Even when addressing a profoundly common topic — disaffected youth and drugs — in “We Will Go Everywhere (Part 2),” Wiggins’ plaintive pleas, “Don’t give in when / Everyone just goes inside / To waste time and fragile lives / To turn on the lights / Shut the blinds / Sit really still / And get really high,” ring with uncommonly raw sincerity.
The Mangum/Elephant 6 comparison is something Wiggins appreciates, but humbly rebuffs. Instead Wiggins cites influences as varied as jazz greats John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, rocker Billy Childish and his bands Thee Headcoats and The Milkshakes, and hip-hop artists like Biz Markie, Mad Lib and Quasimodo. The indie hip-hop element is easiest to discern on “Jellyfish As Fluxus Directory”: anchored with a thick layer of lo-fi drum machine beats that degenerate into a crash of keyboards and MIDI wheezes, the track showcases some of Please Step Out of the Vehicle’s offbeat sound alchemy, namely a Super Nintendo and a Gameboy equipped with Mario Paint sampling software and hooked up to a sampler. The unpredictable nature of the song creates the bulk of its appeal, and perhaps represents the future direction of the band’s sound. “There’s some really good psychedelic bands going on. I think psychedelic hip-hop is the next step,” predicts Wiggins, adding that drummer David Fimbres is heavily influenced by jazz and hip-hop and that the local Portland scene contains “a whole lotta punk rock, some really cool improv musicians, and hip-hop and free jazz.” However, melodic standouts like “We Will Go Everywhere (Pt. 2)” and “Clouds Question Their Existence” underscore the band’s continued attachment to Moog-laced indie pop and psychedelic rock roots.
Although Wiggins is credited as the band’s songwriter and de facto frontman, he maintains that it is a collaborative process. “I’ll write a song and take it to the guys, and we’ll figure something out ... the other guys put in a lot.” Wiggins generally lays down the percussive tracks and elements first, relying on bandmates Seth Brown, Justin Fowler and Fimbres for advice, input and inspiration. “Seth, our multi-instrumentalist, is just a genius — he can melodically and percussively play bird calls on the melodica, like duck and crow calls, and some other animals.” Working with bandmates with overlapping musical abilities (Brown and Fowler both play drums) gives Wiggins the luxury of experimenting with different percussive elements as well as different percussionists, and allows for multiple variations of a song. Wiggins does maintain, though, that “We just write music like other bands do.” Along with bassist Chris Ubick, Wiggins, Fowler, Brown and Fimbres comprise the core members of the group, with contributions from saxophonist Kate Walsh and trombonist/vocalist Liam Kenna. A collective of local, musically-inclined friends also provides occasional assistance, adding everything from vintage video game sequencer support to the occasional violin wail. Although Wiggins acknowledges that “the orchestral thing is definitely cool,” he appreciates the simplicity of the acoustic set. “We have so many instruments, I don’t know how we’d get around ... trying to tour is a serious task,” he says, indicating that a pared-down sound might be necessary for the band’s upcoming gigs in Seattle and any shows outside of Portland. Potential plans for a more extensive West Coast tour are on the docket for Spring, and with a set list of 40-50 rotating originals and a handful of covers, it’s clear that Please Step Out of the Vehicle will need to undergo some self-editing of its extensive repertoire before hitting the road. It might be a tricky task: if the wealth of ideas on Sleeping Right ... isn’t proof enough, chances are that Wiggins and his collective of bandmates will have an even more daunting catalog to choose from after an entire soggy, creative winter spent holed up in the studio.
www.mattwrightpr.com/bands/please-step-out-of-the-vehicle
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