Before you fully subscribe to the notion that the blogosphere killed the cult band, take a moment to consider Soft Tags. Sounding like college radio, one a.m. circa 1982 and tirelessly recording, and releasing as many as three records a year, this band is keeping the DIY, screenprinting and four track ethos alive from their home base of Portland, Oregon. 

The band started when kitchen four-tracker Richard Shirk (vox, guitars, Yamaha MT 50) met multi-instrumentalists Adam Jones, Paul Notley and Tim Yates (both Tim and Paul are British citizens) through working on a film shoot. They soon began working out songs (starting with Who covers) and brought Yate’s university pal Gordon Nickel into the band on drums. Thomas Bradley Meyers (gtr) joined Tags after the band saw and loved his gallery show. Tags have been playing together for just over a year and a half.

Richard grew up in midwest where he lived in a haunted house, saw a UFO in close proximity, and generally grooved on the spookiness of middle of nowhere Iowa.  The sense of the vast, empty spaces, the strange burn-marks out in the fields and the abandoned farmhouses show up frequently in Tags songs and the experience influenced Shirk’s stance on songwriting – a song should be a story with a time, a place, and a cast of characters ala Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave.

Mathematical Monsters is the new record from Soft Tags. A double record that spans the range of their current inclinations, containing fuzzed-out beatnik indie-rock (‘The Pine Barrens,’ ‘Overhead, the Weathership’), whisper quiet, spooky folk (‘Gone,’ ‘Locksmith Widower’) and buzzing guitar ‘n’ hammond organ rock’ n’ roll (‘Architect Song,’ ‘Elms’). Along with the band’s cover of ’30 Century Man’ by Scott Walker, and instrumentation including violin, theremin, bow-bass, radiators and saxoflute. Soft Tags have put proof to tape that they are one of the strangest, most surprising and original bands in Portland right now.

‘Mathematical Monsters’ (Dec 09) follows in the footsteps of the critically acclaimed ‘Blue House’ LP (Feb 09) and the ‘Seafoam Green EP’ (July 09) and was written about Benoit Mandelbrot, escape, love, outer space and a supercomputer going mad in long island that is using quantum fireworks to stop time. A true DIY outfit, the band produced, recorded, engineered and mixed the record over a span of about 2 months in places as diverse as an abandoned cement factory in Portland, a West Hollywood apartment and on the cold and desolate streets of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Soft Tags are on tour all summer with the Prids.