Boys Will Be Quick & Easy

Portland’s The Quick & Easy Boys are bringing the party back to Eugene in celebration of their new record Make It Easy. The Boys’ bread and butter is an infamously high energy live show — so EW asked bassist Sean Badders what putting out a new recording means to a band in the age of the internet.

“I imagine it’s the same any year a band releases a record,” Badders says. “Now you need a few thousand dollars and anyone can put an album out. Even for the negatives that come with the territory, I still think it’s a great thing that people are able to create and share art.”

Make It Easy, recorded in Eugene at Gung Ho Studio, continues in the vein of the Boys’ Red Hot Chili Peppers funk-punk power-trio sound — if slightly more polished than their previous work. “If you like rock but hate Nickelback, you probably will like at least half of what we do,” Badders jokes.

The record opens with “Hey Hey Hey” — recalling the skittery dance-punk of the ’80s. “Without You” features vocalist-guitarist Jimmy Russell soaring into a Prince-like R&B falsetto. “Slack Mountain” rides a sludgy Zeppelin-esque riff stitched with a P-Funk-style chorus.

I ask Badders which musicians, living or dead, he’d like to play the record for. His answers are as varied as the band’s sound: Mike Watt, Jay-Z and “Lady Gaga, but that’s just ’cause I’m a big fan of hers.”

The Quick & Easy Boys host their CD release party with Reeble Jar 9 pm Saturday, May 11, at WOW Hall; $10 adv., $12 door. — William Kennedy

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