Chad Batka for The New York Times Morning Teleportation on Friday.You see a lot of the indie-rock deadpan at CMJ — that look of studious indifference to both the audience and any pleasure from the music. But not from Morning Teleportation, a band from Portland, Ore., whose lead singer, Tiger Merritt, grinned beatifically through its whole set at Public Assembly on Friday, singing choruses like “Why is love so hard to say?”
Things were already smile-worthy as the band arrived in shaggy, early ’70s haircuts and what looked like thrift-store clothes chosen to maximize the number of colors: plaid, patchwork, knit, adding up to enough hues for a test pattern.
They didn’t exactly match, but they fit the music, which was just as motley. Shimmering guitar patterns, with a touch of African highlife, floated over a Bo Diddley backbeat; a Creedence Clearwater twang got revved up to new-wave speed; a vintage synthesizer booped out a whimsical melody line; lyrics arrived in rapid-fire bursts and gave way to lightheaded ahs and la-las. A guitar solo went through a ’70s-style voice bag; ragtimey fingerpicking led into an odd-meter section that was interrupted by a trumpet and quickly detoured toward funk.
The whimsy and eclecticism came out of the jam-band playbook, but Morning Teleportation doesn’t take time to jam — it has so many ideas it doesn’t need to stretch anyone’s attention span. No wonder they were grinning.