by JOHNSON CUMMINS

While the Portland music scene is being touted as “the new Montreal,” Brooklyn’s favourite boho depot Williamsburg (which preceded the 514 in the spotlight) is still churning out some of the most cutting-edge bands going. Just look at the frontal-lobe-expanding psychedelia of Williamsburg residents Oneida and the sheets of sound from Black Dice.

Another band coming from that fertile ground is Blood on the Wall. “Willamsburg is a bit like dancing with the devil,” says bassist/singer Courtney Shanks, a Kansas City transplant. “It’s really expensive to live there, it smells bad and it can be really hard there, but there is just so much energy. People who are in bands kind of hang out at the same bars and go to the same shows together, and everybody feeds off of that. I feel really lucky that I can just hang out with all of these people and really dig what they do. But like a lot of people in Williamsburg, I’m also hoping that one day I can move out and live somewhere where there are trees.

“I really miss seeing trees.”

One thing that keeps BOTW an arm’s length away from their noisy neighbours in the 917 is their sense of fun. After listening to their second album Awesomer (which is the best titled album since Dark Side of the Spoon, BTW), you really get the feeling that this brother and sister team (Shanks’s younger brother is the co-singer and co-songwriter) rounded out with a drummer, actually do hang out with each other, listen to records together, and no doubt kill the odd sixer in the rehearsal space together. The record is lighthearted but never stoops to the vapid, and is rife with character hooks but never afraid to throw in a musical wink and nod to Black Sabbath, Yo La Tengo or Jonathan Richman.

Their influences really get worn on their sleeves when Brad Shanks’s Frank Black falsetto perfectly offsets Courtney’s Kim Gordon. “I know that we have been compared to a lot of bands and people mention a lot of bands that they think we sound like, but a friend told me a long time ago not to read your own press. I guess I like to listen to Black Sabbath, Funkadelic, Velvet Underground, James Brown and a lot of early bands. I don’t think we really sound like them, but it’s cool if people think we do. I didn’t really even start listening to Sonic Youth until way after the fact. It’s cool that there are all these cool new bands now, but if you can just go home and listen to Maggot Brain or Masters of Reality…”

If Shanks is downright giggly over the phone, talking about Ozzy and co. while watching a video of the ’70s TV special A Star Wars Christmas, it’s no wonder. Blood on the Wall is still in their honeymoon stage, with only two weeks of touring under their belt and only one show down on their current two-week stretch.

“I really don’t know if anybody knows us outside of New York. We went out with Enon for a while but this touring thing still seems really new. We’re all best friends and we have so much fun together and that really is the important thing. If for the next one, we release a big turd of a record that sucks, it won’t matter as long as we really like that big turd of a record and we’re still having fun and enjoying hanging out together. If we’re not having fun, I don’t think we would bother being a band.”

With Psychic Ills and Feu Thérèse at la Sala Rossa on Monday, Dec. 12, 9 p.m., $12

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