Written by: Dave Cantrell
OK, straight up, it feels to me that fate dealt me a bit of a bummer hand insofar as this band is concerned. Why? Well, primarily because they’re a Portland-based band and, as most of you know, I was not only resident of that fair city for some thirty-six years but also, as most of you are also aware, hosted a weekly darkwave/post-punk radio show on XRAY-FM (Songs From Under the Floorboard; every playlist here) that spanned from 2012 until just after my wife and I moved south in 2023 and, I dunno, it feels to me that there must have been some quietly sinister forces at work that prevented me from hearing – or even hearing of – Abronia, a six-piece piece of wonder that, as the promo email that accompanied the following mind-blowing track asserted with which I so concur that I’m breaking a longstanding rule to never quote such sources, traffics in a “singular blend of widescreen psychedelia, desert noir, Eastern drone, avant-jazz, doom, post-punk, and acid-folk,” all of which, if one dissects the multiple layers within this wondrous new track, are swirled up with such seeming ease into one addictive symphonia of pretty much every one of those powerful elements in such a way as to make the joins snakingly invisible that one is left, rather inevitably, a bit speechless. Which is to say, this is a four-and-one-half-minute blur of wonder, force, natural blood-driven momentum and (despite its multiple elements) a singular devotional voice that overwhelms with a flowing, unforced ease. It is, in short, stunning, storming forward on what seems a shared in-the-moment intuition, so singular in its dynamics as to merit the word ‘inimitable’ which, believe us, isn’t an impression we here at SEM encounter on the daily. Now in their eighth year, with members wielding a powerful coalescence of instruments – tenor sax, pedal steel, bass plus a pair of guitars, melodica, and a “big drum” that added up could rightfully be referred to as The Impact Sound, 21st Century Portland Style – we are here to witness, by evidence of this track anyway, releasing tomorrow as the lead single to the forthcoming (2/20/26) and quite aptly-titled full-length Shapes Unravel, the most utmost arrival of one of ‘those’ forces to be reckoned with in quite some time and I can but say that, even with the fervent never-ending tide of Portland-based projects both new and established that are unleashed upon us with unstinting consistency, none, and I mean none have landed with the devotional intensity of Abronia. “New Imposition”? Hell, please mates, impose yourselves on us at will.
[and, to credit those to whom enormous credit is due, here’s the who-does-what of this mighty sextet]:Keelin Mayer: Vocals, Tenor Saxophone, Flute
Rick Pedrosa: Pedal Steel, Percussion
Robert Grubaugh: Big Drum, Percussion, Melodica
Danny Metcalfe: Bass
James Shaver: Guitar
Eric Crespo: Guitar, Backing Vocals
