Freelance Whales

Okay, so I am probably discovering the band Freelance Whales very, very late, but I don’t care, it’s a new band to me and I really like their sound. I had the TV on for a few minutes this morning and I heard a song that sounded so great I quickly wrote down the first line so I could look it up later and find out who was responsible for it.

I did the Google search and found Freelance Whales and all their quirky sounds. I watched a video of them performing at SXSW 2010 for NPR Music. They were performing Generator (First Floor), which at this infant stage of my appreciation for them, I can tell this must be one of their more popular songs, or their most popular song. After all, it was playing during a Starbucks commercial.

While watching them jam away I was reminded of Arcade Fire (although Freelance Whales is a smaller group), but in their performance they had this awesome connection like they were all sharing the same brain to tell them when to start into the song or when to pick it up or slow it down. Arcade Fire is extremely good at this. I know this comes from a ton of practice and memorizing all the songs and reading each other’s signals, but not all groups do this very well. So, Freelance Whales definitely caught my eye because of this.

And there was one more thing, they looked very Portlandish. A couple flannel shirts, a couple glasses leaving you to wonder if the people wearing them actually need them, some tight jeans, and one pair of pink leggings. It appeared to be a carefully crafted image that is no longer unique and now the fodder for jokes in Portlandia. And then I read that they weren’t from Portland. They’re from New York. All of a sudden I liked what they were wearing and I liked them a heck of a lot more.