First Second chance Satellite Lot release their long-awaited debut this Summer BY SAM PFEIFLE
	SECOND SUMMER Satellite Lot’s debut record is available for free download at www.satellitelot.com, and will be available for purchase July 10

For watchers of Portland’s indie-rock community, Satellite Lot were in danger of becoming more myth than reality. There have been whispers for years, promises of an album from a band than many pegged as one of the scene’s most interesting and inventive. They were part Devo, part Mr. Bungle, part Beatles, with a feel as much for songwriting as performance and entertainment, and in love with their keyboards and computers.

Things, as they say, never really seemed to come together, though. Band members came and went. Most people forgot about Satellite Lot, other than to remember a Skinny show they once did — when was that, again?

The Lot ended up as just two, Casey McCurry and Aaron Hautala, and they toiled away, recording and writing in their practice space and homes, at one point reimagining themselves as an all-vocals pop outfit, by one rumor. Samples of their work would be issued, the album would be discussed, they would go back underground (or, rather, people would stop paying attention).

In the last three months, however, things seem almost magically to have come together in indie-pop perfection. They’ve completed, mastered, and shipped their debut album, Second Summer, and it is a veritable masterpiece, full of melancholy-pop, ethereal song constructions and arrangements, honest soul, and a little bit of fun.

I was totally hooked from the first few bars. "That Wasn’t Me" opens the album with a guitar piece like a kid practicing the coolest riff he ever thought up, in his bedroom, just slightly lo-fi. Then we enter into the song proper, with Hautala coining a wavering country pop, "I let me pride get carried away," slow and chill, full of real regret, then bursting into a rocking "until it strangled everything/ Whether you liked me or not (ot-ot) these days [complete with indie-rock warble]/ I pretend that wasn’t me."

A commentary on Satellite Lot past? Did they spend too much time on their arrangements and constructions and miss the songs for the grand plan? It’s unclear. So much else on Second Summer is straight-ahead broken heart that this opener could easily just be one of many love songs that populate a nostalgic album of girlfriends past.

At least the breakup with Satellite Lot members past was an amiable one. Members Chris Burns, Travis Bernier, and Jason Ingalls all make contributions to the album, along with what seems like half of the Portland music scene. Ingalls and Burns play drums and bass, respectively, on "Blessed with a Curse," which features a mockingly high-voiced opening, sarcastic and cutting: "You don’t need to tell me how intelligent you are." The tune continues, alternately sweet and bitter, desperate and angry, and features a cool "oh, oh, oh-ah-ohhhhh" segue that easily could have come off Pet Sounds. Later, "your lies (hah)/ disgrace (hah)" features yells from audioblacK’s Jason Beal and Jason Leone, as they lend their heavy aesthetic to the song — Ingalls matches them, drums just heavy-handedly pounding, like someone punching the heavy bag to relieve stress and frustration.

Bernier chimes in later by providing the acoustic-guitar foundation to "In Protest," an ethereal tune that seems more like the old Lot, though infused with some of the same melancholy sentiment as the newer stuff. A descending keyboard line drops in from the sky, a bass drum booms in (William Fernald), ghostly vocals fade to back and rise to front over a military drum-roll on the snare and a flute (or something), also old-timey military — then, is that an accordion? Why not? The song screams soundscape, like what you hear when epic movies are panning over great plains full of buffalo.

McCurry and Hautala don’t always need help, though. They play parts aplenty on "All Defenses Down," riffing off echoed vocals by the crystal-voiced Sydney Bourke, "rising from the water." The soft pop of the chorus, particularly the delivery on "so feel your insides out for a while," is so delicious you can taste it, as is the vampy indie/country/pop construction that follows a line like "two strangers pass on a dusty road."

Bourke also stands out on the album’s finisher, "By Lantern Light," a crushing heartbreaker that gets you from note one. Bourke’s ultra-high soprano cuts like an icy wind coming off the water in January before Hautala joins her like a warm embrace for the second half of each of the first two verses. It’s a song for ghosts and spirits, piano and drums building and joined by keyboards that depart — cymbals crash, melodies build and repeat, the song hypnotizes.

What a contrast to the album’s other real ear-catcher, "Hold Your Fire," like Bruce Springsteen covered by Meatloaf on an album produced by Prince. It’s the little things that will win you over here: a light children’s xylophone plucking out notes in the background; the boy’s longing that comes with "oh, I was so crazy about you"; the fuzzed-out guitar solo paired with the clean drum sound they note was captured by Mark Bartholomew at Tsunami Sound.

Every detail is attended to here, yet the album never feels less than organic and evolving. The piano ballads shimmer, the Depeche Mode homages drive and burn, a dirge like "Keepin’ You" comes complete with vocals affected and deep in the background, behind appropriate organs to open, before stepping up into an ’80s synth number in half-time. What makes it all work? Maybe it’s the bass drum calling out like a heartbeat, "thump, thump-thump."

Oh yeah, there’s plenty of heart on this record.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com