{photo from their myspace}

I have had a very long love affair with Portland's psych-pop keyboard fuzz pedal freaks Quasi. I first purchased their 1999 Up Records release Field Studies in my freshman year of high school and quickly fell in love with its dirty as hell sounding guitars and keyboards, mixed with Janet Weiss' god like drumming and Sam Coomes' beautiful pop melodies. I fell even harder for 1998's Featuring "Birds", with its incredibly sad but still poppy songs, like "I Never Want to See You Again", "You Fucked Yourself" and "The Poisoned Well" (with lyrics like "You won't live long/but you may write the perfect song/please excuse who choose to not play along").

Seeing Quasi live is always an experience, to say the least. Sam Coomes keeps his keyboard covered in a wood box so that no one can see what he plays. He has a vast array of crazy pedals that I always try to memorize but I never can. Janet looks like a drum goddess with her hair blowing performing her effortless nearly melodic drum fills. I've never seen them as a three piece, but they now have Joanna Bolme of Janet's other band, the Jicks, playing with them. I can only imagine that would enhance the Quasi experience.

Plus, one time I saw them perform almost all of Featuring "Birds" in an almost all request set. And, you'll probably see Sam Coomes hump his keyboard. Tonight at the Vera Project, I'll be up front gawking at their masterpiece talent and singing along.