"I have never been interested in doing a solo album or having a solo career," says Sam Coomes. As you might imagine, he's sitting at a sidewalk picnic table at a North Portland coffee shop, his dog Murphy in tow. But despite his avowed lack of interest, Coomes is illuminating the circumstances behind the release of his very first solo record (unless you count Blues Goblins), Bugger Me, which comes out August 19 on No Quarter Records.

You may already know Coomes as one-half of Quasi, his long-running pop-spaz duo with drummer and ex-wife Janet Weiss and a staple of the Portland underground since 1993. Following the release of Mole City in 2013, Coomes says Quasi was in search of a new muse.

"We still intend on working, but we can't just do the same thing," he explains. "We need to have a new idea and we haven't really had one. Mole City felt like a final chapter, not an opening or middle."

When Coomes presented his songs as a potential new direction for Quasi, Weiss wasn't interested. That's what made him decide to pursue Bugger Me.


"I'm not sure why this didn't work out as Quasi," says Coomes. "I didn't really have time to worry about it too much; I just shifted gears and made it happen."

Bugger Me is a stylistic tangent from the slightly more organic instrumental arrangements of Quasi's catalog. Coomes explores a minimalist slant that, with the help of with a mid-1960s rhythm box and organ, comes across as pretty un-minimal. The album vacillates between accessible pop gems and cubist mindfucks.

The intentionally creepy melody of "Tough Times in Plastic Land" and the nightmarish organ murder instrumental "Corpse Rider" would sound perfect in the background of a David Lynch noir freak-out. Two-parter "The Tucchus" is an extraterrestrial stroll through an insomniac's foggy reality.

This is as it should be. According to Coomes, staying up late, staring at the ceiling, and "freaking out" were the key sources of inspiration for much of the material on Bugger Me.


"Everything on the record is black and white," he says. "It's not a color record. I tried to be a little bit yin and yang. The songs in general, I would say, are relatively accessible. Basically pop tunes. But instead of making them sweet and light, I wanted to put them in a darker place so there would be this black and white. I didn't want it gray. It was the central aesthetic I was using."

Despite Bugger Me's "Suicide meets the Beach Boys" blueprint (that's Coomes's formulation, from the bio he wrote to accompany the record), there is one exception: "Fordana" stands out—much the same as the immortal "Clouds" stood out on Quasi's official debut, R&B Transmogrification—not only because it's a ballad on an album full of darker experiments, but because it's perhaps the most personal song he's ever written.

"That one really motivated me to keep on with it and develop everything else," he says, explaining that it's a love song for his wife. "I don't usually try to get in contact with my own feelings while performing; I just channel whatever energy is in the song. After the show is over, I shake it off and I become my walking-around self. But I haven't done a song like 'Fordana' in a while, and performing that song really fucks with me. In a good way." recommended