Corvallis-born Celtic rockers dive into new songs at Platinum

Fans of Amadan's Celtic-inspired, driving rock rhythms will dive joyfully into "Pacifica," the new release from the Corvallis-born and bred band, now based in Portland, that has set feet to stomping in bar and festival venues since 2000.

The band's love of performing still propels its signature sound this third time around, but, unlike "Sons of Liberty" (2002) and "Hell Bent 4 Victory" (2004), "Pacifica" is all about the instruments, yielding a cleaner mix and a finer focus on playing, rather than merely rocking.

With an assortment such as Jeremy Bauer on spoons, penny whistle, snare drum and banjo, Andy Gross on didgeridoo, Mike Morrow on drums, Naoyuki Ochiai on fiddle, and Kevin Pardew and Eric Tonsfeldt on bass and lead guitars, the obviously higher quality in mixing results in a sound almost entirely new.

The album's first four tracks, "The Old North End," "Anchor Tattoo," "Not Your Man" and "Used to Know," energetically recall the familiar hard-drinking lyrics and growling vocals the band's rowdy audiences love, while revealing the thread of each instrument much more distinctly.

Along about track five, which is misleadingly titled "Serenity," the more mature studio sound emerges as guitar, drum and banjo threads are combined one after another. The beat isn't serene (and without liner notes in my preview copy I couldn't exactly determine what the title is intended to signify), but Bauer's banjo and Ochiai's fiddle spill forth with a clarity uncommon in early hard-rocking Amadan songs, bringing this song to a newly orchestral finish.

With track six, the album amps up to a completely fresh level. The song is called "Pishi," which UrbanDictionary.com defines as "amazing, beautiful, flawless, wondrous," and if this isn't what the band means with that title, it ought to be. A three-and-a-half minute instrumental showcase of everything the band plays, including the spoons, "Pishi" builds to a frenzied fiddle crescendo that, just when you think Ochiai might spontaneously combust, instantly segues into the next track, "Coming Home," which adds vocals to the driving fiddle and rapid-fire percussion.

"Mescaline" follows, with a cheerfully altered vocal track, shouted-back chorus, and intricately competing guitar picking and fiddling.

After returning to the thumping beat and defiant lyrics of Celtic-punk territory with "Leaving of Liverpool" and "Damn This!" the band offers the brief instrumental "Devil in the Kitchen" before launching headlong into something completely unexpected.

"Devolution Now" offers a thrumming drum and guitar beat deliberately underscored by an indistinctly audible vocal track from which certain buzz words emerge, such as society, religious fundamentalism, mass media, biological entities, ideas of the eternal and personal choice, evoking a maelstrom of issues along with a melody both driving and plaintive.

Again, without liner notes this track remains inscrutable, but it concludes the album with a thought-provoking note that, along with the cover art, a vivid artistic rendering of evolution reversed, signals new frontiers for the once famously full-out party band. Whether Amadan can reproduce "Pacifica" live is irrelevant when fans can take an album like this home to play over and over. The primal drone of the didgeridoo alone is worth the price of admission.

Check it out

Corvallis-born Celtic/punk/pop group Amadan will celebrate the release of their third album, "Pacifica," at 9 p.m. on Friday, April 6, at Platinum; cover is $7. My Life in Black and White will also perform. The group plans to celebrate the new release also on Saturday, April 7, at Berbati's Pan in Portland.