The Get Hustle

"Are you ready? Are you ready?!?" howls Valentine, vocalist of Portland's The Get Hustle, as spidery piano and slinky percussion shudder like a death knell all around her. The thing is, it's too late: You're already three songs and two changes of underwear into Dream Eagle 1, the trio's 2002 EP, a tour de fright of seething violence and vicious lust that comes on like Nina Simone vamping with the Black Heart Procession. With a long-awaited new album, Brothers and Others, set for release sometime this summer, Valentine and her cohorts (keyboardist Mac Mann and drummer Ron Avila, both formerly of the legendary cabaret-hardcore outfit Antioch Arrow) are road-testing their songs across America with New York's infamous Liars before caressing Denver with lush, jazzy ethereality. Not that it's something to shoe-gaze to, however. More riveting than a machete to the vertebrae, the group's music wedges itself into your consciousness, a vestigial specter pointing to an age when pagan rites were held under the glory of sun and moon, when myth and poetry were the only human tongues. Whether you know it or not, you were born with the sound of The Get Hustle dissolved in your bloodstream -- you need only hear it to remember. People, get ready.