Lost On Liftoff

To listen to music go here:
http://www.myspace.com/lostonliftoff

It’s no surprise that former Goud’s Thumb and 6gig frontman Walt Craven professes a
simple focus for his third foray into the Portland music scene and beyond. “The song is king,”
he says. “The songs are the spotlight and not any one particular person or instrument.”

That’s a lot easier to say when you are surrounded by the talent Craven is in Lost on Liftoff.
He counts himself lucky Nick Lambert (Chaos Twin, guitars and vocals), drummer Shane
Kinney (Broken Clown), and bassist Dan Walsh known as Shifty (Chaos Twin, The Clay People)
called him up and asked him to join a project they’d been playing around with for a year or so.

“I’ve known Nick for a long time and I knew that Nick was a great songwriter, so I was pretty
excited,” says Craven. “I was floored by the songs that they were working on and I called Nick
back immediately and said, "I'm in".

Good thing for us he did. The four-song tease they release January 31 is loaded with huge
singalongs and compelling rock and roll. That’s right, rock and roll. Can we be excused if
we like to risk hearing damage in the car on the way to work? No, you can’t have a conversation
over this. Shut up and nod your head.

The songs are full of progressive songs that love every bit of the verse-chorus-verse
construction, but don’t think just one type of verse, or one type of chorus, is quite enough
for one song.

There isn’t a throwaway transition or verse on this entire EP.

“40 Miles” is the obvious single. It separates itself immediately with the two
guitars repeating a quick 16-note, measure-long lick that carves out a back-ended high
hook. Walt enters over the still-spare background: “Forty miles to go, and there is no
summer/ could you take me home? Could you be yourself?” Kinney’s drum s punctuate
the end of each line, while the guitars support in a kind of holding pattern, like restless
caged animals. “I can feel the sway beneath my feet as we go...”

An entreaty serves as transition to the chorus before, whammo, here comes the big
singalong. You’ll have it down by the time the first listen ends, so I won’t bother typing
it out, but don’t forget to listen for Kinney’s snare. It has some interesting deviations,
sometimes solidly on the one, other times throwing in little hiccoughs on the 2 and 4.
Don’s miss his fills, either, coming into the chorus. Not that you could.

The song is just as just-plain-catchy as anything Blink 182 ever wrote, but with more
depth of feeling. It doesn’t feel that disposable, nor does it feel written for a 14-year-old girl.
Though the 14-year-old girls ought to like it just fine (those who forget that 14-year-old girls
drive the record market are destined to become “underground”). The jokes are simply too
obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: There ought to be a little bit more 14-year-old girl in all of us.

There’s some in Lost on Liftoff, that’s for sure: “There’s just a cool, ego-less atmosphere
and there’s an open mindedness involved that makes it very easy to try new and different
things,” says Craven. “Plus, the music is just fun to play.”