Bowerbirds' accordionist Beth Tacular paints-- sometimes on paper, sometimes on craggy bits of salvaged wood-- strange, whimsical landscapes, littered with critters and berries and plants and airplanes and skyscrapers and unicorns and feathers. Tacular's visual art (already beloved by plenty) is packed with big, gnawing oppositions-- industry vs. ecology, urban vs. rural, fantasy vs. truth, man vs. earth-- and Bowerbirds' tingly indie-folk is no less dynamic or indicting.
Tacular, along with partner/guitarist Phil Moore and multi-instrumentalist and producer Mark Paulson, churns out deceptively pleasing folksongs about plants and animals and the unforgivable things we do to them. Even in a post-Al Gore America (where Wal-Mart's gone green-- sorta-- and hybrid cars are as much of an it-accessory as Goyard totes), it's still awfully hard for a sweet-faced North Carolina couple to clutch their instruments to their chests and coo bits like, "It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth" without making everyone squirmy. But Bowerbirds' pro-Earth proselytizing is more endearing (and inspiring) than precious or cloying, and if anything, all that earnestness will just make you adore them more (and, maybe, think a little bit harder about the interstates slicing up your hometown forests).
Snatching their name from an Australian chirper (bowerbirds are most famous for the inverse relationship between a male's plumage and its ability to construct a mate-attracting nest), Bowerbirds' debut long player (released by Pitchfork writer Grayson Currin's label) will likely garner loads of comparisons to Devendra Banhart and Vetiver, but their brand of folk is more Appalachian than British (Carter Family over Bert Jansch), and less concerned with psychedelia than melody (think gypsy-influenced Sufjan Stevens). Opener "Hooves" starts small and modest, with Moore mewing about his mom over spare acoustic guitar ("Back when I was born on a full moon/ I nearly split my momma in two"), before the vocals double, drums kick up, and Tacular's accordion starts to whine: the track is somehow quiet and jarring at the same time, and invites all kinds of twee analogies (a family of deer darting through a clearing! Thunderclaps at night! Rainbows!).
"In Our Talons" is equally mesmerizing, jazzy and rich, with lyrics both gentle and barbed ("We're only human/ This at least we've learned"), while "The Marbled Godwit" is Bowerbirds' most classically freak-folk moment (and most Newsom-inspired title?), with acoustic guitar, high, meandering vocals, and cutting violin. Hymns strongest tracks-- "Slow Down", "In Our Talons", "Dark Horse"-- manage to be both hypnotically pretty and a little bit weird, characteristics of the very best kind of Americana music. Bowerbirds do for backyards what the Hold Steady's done for parking lots-- translated place into sound.
