Only the tip of the iceberg

Aan’s first official release, I Could Be Girl For You, consists of five compositions ranging from wobbly and sort of drunken slowness to ecstatic explosions of high-powered energy textured with mock endings and extremely pleasing vocal harmonies.

Upon sliding the disk into a player, one’s curiosity is magnified and paralleled by the noise coming from it. A wandering guitar riff with some sort of desolate hospital beeping and fuzzy background noise snowballs into an explosion of quickened snare slaps and the shouting of a voice reminiscent of the intensity of old school Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. It breaks down again, a quiet melting of that guitar in question, only to erupt once more and come to an end abruptly.

Bud Wilson, founder of Aan, is sort of like a modern Wagner in the sense that he recognizes the positive consequences of radical dynamics.

“I think a lot about live performance,” Wilson said. “I want people to have to pay attention. I don’t really have intentions as far as creating a mood—I don’t want to make people feel bad—I just want them to feel something. I want to challenge them.”

The second track, “Heart is an Ocean,” begins with a pop-driven bounce that gives way to a catchy, yet melodramatic vocal melody. Though Wilson says his battle with lyrics is the hardest, the words in this song are particularly riveting in places such as “Your heart beats like an ocean, it pounds on and on and on” and “You’re stitching a blanket made of blood and dust and bombs and skin.”

All of these lyrics ride over a lone-range whistle and echoey synth sounds. This one also breaks down so far that just when you think it’s coming to its end, the guitar fading out softly and emotionally, it jumps back at you like an arched-back cat, blowing complacency right through your head.

When Wilson left his cattle-driving folks in Idaho and found himself in Portland, engaging in a whole new musical game, he quickly realized that he wanted more than a slot as a member of a bar band.

Amor Ad Nauseam was originally Wilson’s outlet for sappy and angry heartthrob songs, though over time the name was simplified to AAN, swift and unpretentious, along with the eventual addition of band members. In 2008 Wilson finally secured his two sidekicks, Reese Lawhon and Mica Rapstine, both of whom are brilliant musicians and enable the full-fledged live experience.

“Toy” is like a telephonic seraph, though there are not as many dynamic changes in this one. This is where the listener first experiences the harmonies of both Wilson and Rapstine, the latter known for his incredibly high falsetto. The effect brings clarity to an otherwise distant and muted sound held together by crispy electronic beats.

Between tracks three and four is a snippet of some faraway jam, dancing in wordless vocals and fantastic acoustic guitar.

The longest song on the album, “For Marble,” sounds like Christmas and water and open doorways—it’s like three songs in one, connected gracefully by a melancholic web. The final piece is a shadowy echo of birds and loneliness. Appropriately titled “Sunday,” the song carries like a memory of better days, of some snowcapped peak through slide guitar and a phantom orchestra. 

Overall the album is a complex gathering of human emotion, unique in its delivery and well worth the listen. Tonight’s show will be the first of many—the first non self-released album release show and the first stop on an entire West Coast tour.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Wilson.