Too often, it seems, songwriters must choose between the intimate and the anthemic. Portland, Oregon's A Weather, however, have managed to create an album full of songs that are both sonically expansive and painstakingly private. Their debut full-length is bursting with intricately plotted melodies and lush arrangements that sound like they were made in a bedroom, but meant for a ballroom.
Sure, the news angle here is how a relatively unknown quintet from the Rose City snagged an opening slot on last year's Bright Eyes tour and a spot on Team Love's roster. But, despite their organic instrumentation and reluctance to deviate from sad, slow songs, they have little in common with their labelmates, and thus Conor Oberst's involvement is a mere parenthetical to the real story: these elaborately plush songs. Like Beach House without the gossamer reverb or Stars stripped of their most upbeat pop impulses, A Weather uses warm organs, folk-influenced guitars and the hushed interplay between the male and female vocalists to weave a tapestry of tenderly crafted chamber-pop that pays as much attention to its straightforward choruses as it does to its evocative details.
Singer/drummer Sarah Winchester has an emotive yet controlled coo reminiscent of Aimee Mann's, and sexy, sad album opener "Spiders, Snakes" sounds like "Save Me" from the Magnolia soundtrack if Mann's version was fleshed out by fuller instrumentation and complemented by breathy male vocals. (Also, notably, that track references Bedhead, another band that knew that slow and somber didn't mean boring.)
Those male vocals are provided by frontman Aaron Gerber, who, against his partner's Mannish tones, shapeshifts his winsome, pliant voice into disparate pop guises depending on each song's mood. For "Pilot's Arrow", a muted acoustic number that uses flight as a metaphor for a failing romance (and, curiously, finds Gerber singing to his drummer by name), he gets in touch with his inner whispery Elliott Smith. And on "Hanging Towers of Baltimore", he embodies the creamy-smooth tenor of Paul Simon, which is apt since the track softly alludes to the parts of Graceland that Vampire Weekend didn't already steal.
Though the interaction between Gerber and Winchester's voices is the dramatic throughline of the album, its heart is her drumming. She plays a threadbare three-piece set, but its sparseness anchors these tracks-whether they're plumped with layers of instruments or spare and folky-in immediacy. "Pinky Toe", which takes the most familiar and banal hurt in the world (that of stubbing a toe) and turns it into a meditation on personal pain, builds anticipation with its raindrop-delicate percussion simmering against the withholding electric guitar line that never seems to fully fill out its melody.
Assured in their quietness, A Weather don't back away from their most vulnerable moments-Gerber and Winchester inhaling in tandem or the rustle of their mouths against the microphones-and it is those tiny, aural imperfections that make this collection so sensual. But unlike the slowcore heroes who have influenced them, this fivesome isn't restrained or careful. Even if the volume on Cove is ubiquitously low and primed for headphone listening, there is a crashing power within. No wonder they named themselves for meteorology; A Weather are, quite literally, a quiet storm.
