Point Juncture, WA…are actually from Portland

The tentative cover art for Point Juncture, WA’s upcoming album, Heart to Elk, is a graphic of an elk’s head surrounded by a heart. Though consistent with the homegrown style of Point Juncture’s visual aesthetic, this particular image boasts a somewhat stranger source.

“Amanda [Spring, vocalist for Point Juncture] had this dream one night,” said Point Juncture, WA multi-instrumentalist Skyler Norwood. “In it we were the house band at an elk’s lodge called Heart to Elk. Later she made this graphic of an elk’s head surrounded by a heart, and we all wound up getting it tattooed on our arms, and Amanda got it put on her neck.”

Such is the friendship between PJ, WA’s members that an off-kilter dream can turn into a permanent physical feature, and a stray idea can be prodded into a spacious masterpiece. Like the elk head image, PJ, WA’s music has grown organically. It starts with the subconscious excitement of its members and has now formed nearly three albums worth of top-notch recordings from a super group of Portland’s most prolific songwriters.

PJ, WA originally migrated to Portland by way of Ashland in search of a larger market for their music. After writing and playing for some time in their new haunts, the group decided to employ the talents of then-emerging producer Skyler Norwood to help facilitate their debut recording.

“Before I joined the band, I recorded their EP,” says Norwood. “I thought it was just amazing, one of the greatest bands I’d ever heard … and Amanda and I had been in a band in college, so I started playing with them.”

Norwood added his skills as a songwriter to Point Juncture’s talent pool and helped build the unstoppable enthusiasm of its members into layered contemplative pop awash in overdubs and excess hooks. The prolific abilities of Point Juncture’s members have been well documented–between the five of them, they can claim collaboration with Talkdemonic, Swim Swam Swum, Loch Lomond, Sea Dogs, Team Evil, The Better Half and Nick Jaina, to name a few. But in the collaborative environment provided by the band, they’ve managed to write songs that stand as singular accomplishments next to their vast collective catalogues.

“I think time is the main difference in Point Juncture’s writing process,” said Norwood. “We have a very relaxed process…. very democratic.”

This laissez faire schedule has allowed Point Juncture to “evolve as [they] go,” but such nuance has also meant a less than consistent creative output for the group. Their 2005 full length, Mama Auto Boss, has been promoted sporadically over the last three years, as Point Juncture’s members deal with projects and obligations reaching into all corners of the Portland music world. But such is their group work ethic that even while involved in myriad side projects, the PJ, WA’s members have found the energy to make the recording of Heart to Elk an “exhausting” endeavor that pushed them to their creative limit.

Moving away from what has been a successful formula, PJ, WA has made Heart to Elk “more rhythmic and groove based” than their past efforts.

“We were very, very methodical with the recording of this record,” says vocalist Victor Nash, “which wound up sounding quite a lot like us being spontaneous…. hopefully it will complement the other records well because I’m still really proud of them.”

The recording process of Heart to Elk has allowed Point Juncture to employ instrumentation formerly foreign to the band, and experiment in producing the most effective arrangements for their songs. This “distilling of ideas” is the core of what tethers PJ, WA’s group of creative overachievers. And by all indications, Heart to Elk will be a further exploration of their ability to become “more than the sum of [their] parts.”

Evolution of ideas seems to be a natural process for a group of people so heavily involved in music, and the drive behind tracks such as “Sick on Sugar” and “Kings Part 2” is a testament to the band’s ability to retain the excitement of their earlier work, while also letting it lead them into unexplored territories.

Point Juncture, WA has been referred to as “Portland’s house band,” and it’s easy to see why. The feeling of community conjured by the group is infectious; it won’t allow you to remain an uninterested observer.

That’s at least partly due to the fact that the band’s members seem to find a deceptively simple joy in the music they make. In observing a collective energy snowballing to such magnitude, it’s easy to understand why the band is inclined to do things like tattoo album art onto their bodies: they possess excitement so intense that there’s simply no choice but to externalize it.

And fortunately for us, Point Juncture, WA has the discipline to create music in a way that is delightfully irresistible.