Here’s a video of Chris Robley & the Fear of Heights playing a set of cover songs @ the Someday Lounge for the “Cover Your Hearts 80′s Tribute Night.”

Chris Robley- guitar/vocals, John Stewart- drums, Arthur Parker- bass, Daniel Adlaf- flugelhorn & keyboards, Ben Landsverk- keyboards, Peter Swenson- percussion, Drew Norman- lead guitar, Benny Morrison- tenor saxophone, Tricia Beck- vocals, Dave Camp- vocals

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers- “Don’t Come Around Here No More”

Paul McCartney w/ Michael Jackson- “Say Say Say”

The Police- “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”

David Bowie- “Modern Love”

Portland Center for the Performing Arts/ ArtBar

presents
Music on Main Street: Songwriters in the Round
Featuring Lara Michell, Chris Robley, Stephanie Schneiderman, Adam Shearer, plus special guests

Wednesday, July 14th
FREE

Songwriters Lara Michell, Stephanie Schneiderman (both from Dirty Martini), Chris Robley and Adam Shearer (of Weinland) will share the stage for a rare and unique songwriter’s circle. Sharing their roots in folk, jazz, indie-pop an soul, the 4 acclaimed Portland musicians will swap stories and songs for an engaging and intimate performance. Special guests will grace the stage throughout the evening.Music on Main Street is your FREE outdoor concert series in the heart of downtown Portland- located between Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and Antoinette Hatfield Hall. The outdoor concert venue will be decked out for summer enjoyment, including a full bar and food menu. Restaurant and bar open at 4:30PM. All shows are free and open to the public- tickets are not needed.

Music on Main Street is made possible through the generous support of these fine sponsors:
Bacardi USA, Brown Forman Beverages Worldwide, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Trinchero, Constellations Wine US, Full Sail Brewing, and Gambrinus.

Chris Robley is a multi-instrumentalist. By which I don’t mean he plays guitars and keyboards. Don’t get me wrong. He does play guitar, keyboards (organs, synths, pianos, etc.) But he also plays bass, vibraphones, marimbas, banjo, mandolin, and so on. That is pretty impressive, especially to me. I have a hard time mastering one instrument.One thing I can say for Chris Robley (aside from the fact that he has created the longest album title I can recall since Fiona Apple‘s When the yada yada yada) is that you won’t hear too many albums like his. Movie Theater Haiku begins with a track that is reminiscent of Murder By Death. It features a healthy dose of strings and a rich, sort of literary feel to it.

In fact, the entire album has a literary feel to it. Just look at the song titles such as “The Late, Great Age of paper (haiku #2)” and “Baltimore Fugitives Buried in Brownsville, TX.” They kind of sound like story titles, don’t they. Robley is not interested in making 3-minute verse-chorus-verse songs. Each one of his songs feels more like a short story put to a fairly complex arrangement. That being said, Robley is not above using a kazoo (“Solipsist in Love”), which is probably the least literary-sounding instrument available.

Robley not only shows skill as a multi-instrumentalist. He has created an album in which the style of music varies from one song to the next. There is a definite darkness in some of the tunes (“A Memory Lost at Sea” and “Glass Reich”) while “The User-Friendly Guide to Change” is an upbeat song with a cool horn part.

I’m not sure I could classify Chris Robley other than to call his music arty and complex. I can’t really say he sounds like anyone, but if you are a fan of The Decemberists, you might want to check out Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights.

Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights – Movie Theatre Haiku

Movie Theatre Haiku marks Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights’ third album, another book in their series of heartbreak and mystery. These new chapters follow characters through journeys into darkness with the optimism shrinking and the anxiety level rising, as their lense on the world becomes narrower as time progresses.Â

Like a mime slowly making it’s way onto the stage, hands up and feeling around the edges of some sort of imaginary room to get their bearings, “A Memory Lost at Sea” starts up with seemingly random sounds of percussion that begin to fall into a rhythm just as a saxaphone starts belting out notes. Almost immediately the rest of the band follows and it sounds like the fumbling mime was joined by a line of burlesque dancers and they’ve got him surrounded. Interestingly enough, the subtitle to the album is aptly named “A Masque of Backwards Ballads, a Picturesque Burlesque”.  Â

Just as one might not imagine a mime put on the same stage with burlesque dancers, but would imagine it interesting, Movie Theater Haiku mixes styles and interesting instruments in ways to keep the listener engaged all the way to the final track. Key and tempo changes also keep the listener on their toes, wondering what will happen next. Yet, given all range from epic choruses to an expressive singular voice and moments of minimal layers versus orchestral grandeur and instrumental diversity, the album maintains a cohesiveness throughout that keep them all laced up in the same story. Each song follows a similar theme within the lyrics like in “Sollipsist in Love” were Robley’s voice proclaims that “it’s hard to believe things outside of my head”, a continuing trend heard throughout.

Chris Robley describes the characters moving through the album as being “lost in this kind of confined space. They fumble in the darkness to feel the four walls closing in on them. They must measure distances in a shrinking world to find their way out.”  In “Glass Reich”, an instrumental track nearing the end, the angular sounds make me think of what it be like to be lost in a room full of cracked mirrors with no indication of a doorway and just feeling washed over with sheer panic as the stress level rises. This is a stark constrast from the instrumental track earlier on which packs a more determined attitude.

Despite the intense emotions provoked by the artist, Robley manages to keep everything centered around quality music and intelligently written lyrics that are enjoyable and worth listening to. In tracks like “Baltimore Fugitives Buried in Brownsville, TX” guitar finger picking and an intense tone are instantly catchy as the tale unfolds with Robley’s vocals taking on a more breathy style. In “Sollipsist in Love” an intense electronic beat fused with piano always sticks with me long after I’ve finished listening to the album. The somewhat strange and interesting instruments and tones fused in this song work really well and go perfectly with the harmonized vocals.

The penultimate track, “Permanent Fixtures of Regret” features dreamlike washes of flutes over acoustic guitar which could be viewed as either the listener giving up and accepting their fate or having found the way out. But then the album closer “Waltz for Angelika Dittrich” closes the curtain with a huried waltz beat with jittery piano and instead of feeling like a goal has been reached, the listener is left more with a high level of anxiety after completing the journey but not at all accomplished.Â

Robley and the Fear of Heights doesn’t want to wrap it up all nice and pretty. Instead they create that emotional response that makes you crave the resolve, like a great movie that ends dramatically but still leaves you with questions floating around in your head. Â

Cutthroat Pop Records

There’s a point during “A Memory Lost at Sea,” which opens Chris Robley’s third effort, Movie Theatre Haiku, when you realize Robley is more than just an indie rocker with a singer/songwriter knack. It is not the judicious use of sax or the slightly askew arrangement. The moment comes when you grasp that the main character is suffering with no closure from his boy’s death. That’s when it is clear Robley is one of the best short-story musicians to come along in quite some time. Robley, who hails from Portland, Oregon, has an Elliott Smithian aspect, including a dramatic viewpoint with a poetic perceptiveness, which gives his songs a well-grounded, literate depth. Movie Theatre Haiku is full of eclectic notions that support Robley’s direct, often misanthropic commentary. “My Life in Film Festivals,” which is quickened by power guitar and kazoo, and folktronica “Solipsist in Love” are both scraped by lyrical pain. Unsparing “User- Friendly Guide to Change” melds Beatles-esque pop with electronica elements, where guitars and synth are balanced by punchy horns. One prominent piece is “Permanent Fixture of Regret,” a smartly written picture of amplified self-loathing which connects the dots between Loudon Wainwright-esque romantic dissolution and Belle and Sebastian-ish melodic indie-pop textures. Movie Theatre Haiku is an album of tension and ambition best experienced with detailed
and repeated inspection. (Doug Simpson)

Stream movie theatre haiku for free by clicking the “Launch Amp 3 Radio” link.