The 14 tracks on Rivers Arms, the second album from twenty-something Texas duo Balmorhea, sound much like the band's list of influences probably reads. For that matter, such a strong, select lexicon could be a subset of most 2007 bands making instrumental music with folk, classical, jazz, and 20th-century classical inspirations: There are the swells of Stravinsky, the mercurial keyboard majesty of Debussy, the triad-based romanticism of Arvo Pärt, the clangorous sensuality of Keith Jarrett, the electronics-meet-acoustics approach of Max Richter, and the beaming melodic flashes of the Takoma Records cartel (from John Fahey to George Winston, mind you).
If those names don't mean much, think of Balmorhea as a freshman-level seminar in making pretty music that works on multiple levels. Most everyone should make it through class and carry something away, while others may use it as an inlet into deeper lessons: On the surface, Balmorhea's music is gorgeous, dynamic, and emotive, a bit like Sigur Rós with an interest in understatement. Rivers Arms combines piano, acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, strings, and samples into short passes, so that nothing's too consuming or exhausting. Though it lasts just less than an hour, Rivers Arms cycles through motifs without wasting many seconds or losing interest.
A closer look, though, reveals accomplished mechanics that allow (perhaps old and familiar) influences to filter into something refreshing. Michael Muller and Rob Lowe (not the 90 Day Man/Singer/Lichen or the sex-tape teen idol/George Stephanopoulos stand-in) are Balmorhea, and they're assisted here by violinist Aisha Burns, cellist Erin Lance, and bassist Jacob Glenn-Levin. Rivers Arms charms so easily because Muller and Lowe separate and integrate so many styles and ideas in small spaces. Several songs based in ivories and bows ("Baleen Morning", "Barefoot Pilgrims") hint at the dramatic climaxes of fuck-all, quiet-loud Texas post-rock. Balmorhea, though, always tug the reins just right, insuring that any incandescence doesn't torch the more journeyman guitar tracks, like the Six Organs-shadowing "Greyish Tapering Ash" or the Album Leaf electronics of "Process". The pieces fit, and the colors blend.
Rivers Arms offers little in terms of technical or compositional innovation, but it does capitalize on a facet of instrumental music that's constantly suggested but rarely accomplished: Despite its often elegiac turns and always graceful maneuvers, the music here leaves itself open to individual interpretation. The songs certainly have their moods, and titles taken from seasons or places suggest inspirations and implications. But these songs never exist in a vacuum, and any dominant air always makes room for the counterpart that's just around the bend. Like "The Winter": All twinkling guitars, fleeting sheets of strings, and piano lines that drift downward in diagonal columns, it feels like the season it proclaims. But traces of hope flicker from twinkling guitars, lining the melancholy. The melody is handled meticulously, too, creating stillness and movement in the same space. "The Summer", which precedes "The Winter", opens with atonal cello sustains. Even though a duet of bucolic acoustic guitars eventually dances above those strings, the foreboding drones hover at the brink, threatening from a distance like a surprise Texas snow cloud.
Such is Balmorhea: Texas gets a rough (if deserved) rap for its extremes, from Plano football games and their cinematic scores to obstinate world leaders and their stubborn ideas. But Balmorhea flashes brilliance only to highlight a slow-burning constancy that's at the core of one of the year's early slow wonders.
