Jewelry Exchange

Jewelry Exchange is a Portland, Oregon based band that’s probably best described as post-punk - but it’s certainly more complicated than that. The band’s creative core is Kyle Dorfman on guitar and vocals, Baptiste Lefebvre on guitar and bass, and Dylan MacNevin on the drums. For their debut record, they’ve been joined by jazz virtuoso Arte Adams on the standup bass and bow. As far as contemporaries go, you could find similarities in groups like Shame, Squid, Protomartyr, and Black Country, New Road. But the band’s influences go back a bit further: the ‘70s krautrock of CAN and Neu!, the ‘80s alternative and noise rock of Sonic Youth and the Pixies, the ‘90s post-rock of Slint and Sigur Rós. Although their influences are noteworthy, the band listened to their instincts above all else to produce a sound unique and authentic. Now with a debut record finished and on the way, you’ll be able to hear for yourself.

Jewelry Exchange’s debut record is an exploration of order and chaos - not simply how order and chaos contrast, but how they transition from one to another, how they bleed into each other, and how they can exist simultaneously. For an easy example, look no further than opening track “Lookalike”, a tour de force that struggles to keep its structure until finally collapsing under its own massive weight. Or “Mean Time”, where control is kept, but barely, and thrillingly. Even the most harmonic tracks feature elements that add tension: linear song structures, shifting time signatures, multiple tempos, and seriously varying lengths. “Maine Streams” begins with an extended emo-tinged intro before taking off to a disco-grooving anthem. “DylWyl” is structurally more ordinary, but built on top of an energetic and claustrophobic drumbeat that never deviates from its track. “The Dolphin” creeps with paranoid anxiety until bursting upward and outward with release.

The band also worked to find optimism through hardship. Instrumentally, this was achieved through embracing clashing ideas with aplomb. In “For Hope”, a downcast ballad, drummer Dylan plays a double-timed kick and hi-hat dance beat. In “Hail Mary”, Baptiste plays melancholic guitar chords with speed, drive, and a full embrace. The band’s greatest tool in emotionality, though, is ambition. They embody it on the seven minute long “Camellia”, which features several free-standing sections that in concert amount to a grand sonic narrative. However, they’re at their most intentful on the ten-and-a-half minute ‘Day Sleeper”. Day Sleeper is likely the opus of the record: a post-rock suite featuring multiple sections, motifs, peaks and valleys, and a resolving coda - not to mention a constant jazz shuffle on the drums and Arte’s emotive stand-up bass with bow played throughout the entirety of the piece.

Lyricist Kyle found songwriting through poetry, following the influence of William Blake’s lyrical poems and the strange, observantly intimate works of the late David Berman. Dorfman attempts to capture a fleeting feeling of moving from one stage of life into the next, and the grief that can be attached to change. The lyrics occasionally venture into the perspective of impish characters following them through foolhardy trips of nostalgia. The songwriter also opens himself up to this same sense of scrutiny. Laying this introspection bare not as a punishment, but rather a celebration for a way to move forward.