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The riverside Siren seems to have attracted more brilliant minds in recent years than the Manhattan Project. While nothing explosive will likely come of it, the rush of settlers to Portland has certainly resulted in a remarkable array of talent.
A prime example is Dominic Castillo, frontman of Ravishers, whose eponymous, full-length debut album is garnering attention well beyond the Rose City’s gates. Why? Berklee-educated Castillo is a one-man Brill Building, for starters. With more hooks than a Willamette fishing boat, Ravishers is an unbelievably tight collection of polished, yet edgy pop. — think Coldplay meets Burt Bacharach, with Joe Jackson-sized doses of “everyman” romanticism tossed in.
Featuring songs with names such as “Cruel Love,” “The Chase” and “Nobody Falls In Love Anymore,” the CD primarily concerns itself with — you guessed it — the pitfalls, perils and triumphs d’amour.
Ironically, Castillo is a newlywed, still in the “throes of young love,” as he described the phenomon to EPB. Of course, he wrote the remarkable album before the rose’s bloom erased the pessimism crucial to such a project.
Ravishers’ origins are more convoluted than a soap opera plot, but the bottom line is that Castillo, 35, was lured from his home in sunny San Luis Obispo a few years ago by “Portland’s eternal winter,” as he characterizes it (interesting fact: Castillo has an identical twin brother, Damon, also a working guitarist).
Ravishers is technically the duo of Castillo and Portland guitar instructor Jonathan Barker; for gigs and recording, a revolving cast of cohorts contribute bass, drums and keyboards. An earlier version of the band was dubbed “Dominic Castillo and the Rock Savants;” several tracks from that venture’s EP, Singles For Singles, are included in the Ravishers disc. Additionally, the group filmed a video for “Keep You Around,” one of the carryovers to the new incarnation.
A new video, for “Underachievers,” is spreading through the Internet on the strength of pro production values meeting an addictive tune. The camera follows Barker on a typical day — with a twist, revealing the duo’s wry sense of humor.
“I had this idea of portraying a day in the life of somebody,” Castillo recalled, “but putting in a little something different… like pole dancing. I was surprised Jonathan agreed to do it.”
Hardly an underachiever himself, Castillo is writing a new Ravishers album, which he says will be finished by year’s end.
Dominic Castillo and the Rock Savants’ “Keep You Around”:
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