Emotions take up space. They are not merely psychological but physical, and, as any tongue-tied 7th-grader knows, they have weight. Music is how they breathe-- through clenched teeth or a lover's soft exhale. The Owls' debut "mini LP," Our Hopes and Dreams, gracefully explores the vacuum left behind when they escape, like helium from a popped balloon afloat somewhere between Sarah Records and Past Masters Volume Two.
Opening track "Air" provides the pin. After an incantatory verse and skidding bass fill, multi-instrumentalist Maria May introduces the disc's koan-like vision with a deceptively simple couplet: "There is only air/ Where I used to care." A few tracks later she will be "looking down over everything" but for now, her breathy vocals are just beginning to flutter in the breeze, held aloft by acoustic guitars, piano, scattershot drums and-- nope, I don't even inhale-- a heavenly duet with The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group's Allison LaBonne. Plus, unlike that Ben Folds song a few years back, this "Air" doesn't even have painful associations with Godzilla.
LaBonne's compositions hold up admirably alongside the more immediately arresting opener. Her "Do Ya?" has much in common with the irrepressible "Air" -- its deliberate pacing, oft-repeated chorus, and whispery harmonies -- but the capricious lyrics ("I think I might blow your poor house down") flesh out May's minimalism with greater humanity. "Drop Me a Line" provides a darker, wind-swept sequel to the dizzy high and bare acoustic guitars of May's "From Far Away". LaBonne's voice drips with desolation: "Drop me a line when you get there, far away/ I know you may never get there/ But you'll stay." Unfortunately, she also proffers the disc's most insipid track, the daintily sing-songy "Baby Boy". This tune's goofy back-and-forth is a powerful argument against piano lessons.
The Owls' most famous member, relatively speaking, is bassist Brian Tighes, frontman for Minneapolis power-pop mainstays The Hang Ups. He also happens to be LaBonne's husband. Tighes' lone songwriting contribution here, "Forever Changing", picks up where the classic 60s pop influences on The Hang Ups' self-titled 2003 release left off, with mellotron, instrumental passages that evince the "sitting in an English garden" bit of "I Am the Walrus", and the occasional handclaps. The title nod to Love is apt.
Clocking in at nearly 25 minutes, the eight-song disc closes with "Even Now", written by drummer and fellow Hang Up Stephen Ittner, who has since left the band. With a shushing sibilance straight out of "Come Together" and a guitar solo befitting that single's double a-side, he tears out where he used to care and plugs it with bitter resignation-- smiling and melodic all the while. "I will never change my mind," he insists. An ephemeral record that wafts gently in the clouds somewhere damn near the Platonic indie pop ideal returns to Earth at last like a lovesick comet on his final, raucous word: "Yeah!"
