Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside take charge on 'Untamed Beast': /music

Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside headline the Wonder Ballroom Feb. 22-23. Their new record, "Untamed Beast," is out Tuesday.

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Stream "Untamed Beast" at the AV Club.

]

Might as well start with

. The introduction to "Untamed Beast," the second full-length album from Portland rock band

, features a mostly nude woman sitting in a chair on the edge of the woods. It's a nice looking chair.

With one hand, the woman holds a steer's skull in front of her face. Her other hand rests in her lap, holding an ice cream cone.

, a Minneapolis photographer whose website features a project titled "Sex With Furniture," put together the photo based on ideas from Ford and a friend.

"It's bold," Ford says.

The record, out Tuesday on Brooklyn, N.Y.-based

and celebrated here with shows

, doesn't back down from the promise the cover makes.

"It's an album about sex and power and freedom and being a modern woman in modern society," Ford says.

It's the 25-year-old frontwoman throwing rapid-fire combinations of confidence and attitude at the world, in an arena historically dominated by men.

"I can cuss, I can scream, I can blow off some steam," she sings on "Bad Boys." "I like bad boys, but I'm like a bad boy as well."

That's not all she says she can do, but that's all that's going to get printed here.

When Ford and the band -- guitarist Jeff Munger, drummer Ford Tennis and bassist Tyler Tornfelt -- released "Dirty Radio" in 2011, they seemed a sure bet for bigger, whatever that means. They'd opened some shows for the Avett Brothers, and J. Crew was pushing one of their songs on its website for anyone online and looking to drop $75 on a plaid shirt.

After the album release, the bet paid off. The band toured with kindred spirit Jolie Holland and the very rowdy Deer Tick. Ford and the guys opened for the Decemberists and for Jack White. They landed on David Letterman's show, and Ford made endearingly awkward chitchat about eyewear with Letterman after their performance.

They got big in France. Spent enough time there for Ford to write "Paris," a plaintive long-distance love song that isn't exactly sentimental.

"I can't save you, man," she sings. "You can only save yourself."

Ford says she discovered that she liked playing the guitar more than she realized, got better equipment, more effects. She got into surf guitar, and the current wave of garage music, artists like

and

.

She took those influences and mixed them into a sound that's most commonly been connected to Billie Holiday and Wanda Jackson. "Untamed Beast" was recorded more than a year ago at Portland's Jackpot Recording Studio, with Justin Collins and Adam Landry, who also produced the Deer Tick record "Divine Providence."

Like Deer Tick's work, "Untamed Beast" doesn't mask its intentions. Ford draws you in, and the band, road-perfected and great on this record, propels the whole (slightly) lurid affair.

"Maybe my grandma won't like it," Ford said, "but my parents won't care."

Late in 2010, with just a handmade EP to sell at all their many shows around Portland, Ford and the band gathered at a bubble tea joint on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard to talk about what might come. All she wanted was to quit her waitressing job, she said then.

Shortly before the release of "Dirty Radio" in 2011, they gathered at the same place and talked about their small measures of success. Ford had quit her restaurant job but would still baby-sit for friends.

Last month, on a sunny, cold afternoon, she grabbed a beer at a Southeast Portland bar and talked for more than 1 1/2 hours about "Untamed Beast" and the statement she makes with the record.

Music Millennium's Terry Currier, a booth over, waved to Ford and assured her the store would stock the uncensored album cover.

"Maybe I won't get any baby-sitting jobs after this record," she said

-- Ryan White

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