Horsefeathers don’t really seem to evolve much, although they are steadily becoming more and more orchestral after the gently plucked guitar strings and shuffling banjo of their debut album.  This record is exactly as I would have expected it, there is nary a raised eyebrow to be found never mind a surprise, and yet I still find it an enormous pleasure to listen to.

The funny thing is that when I first put it on I got that wrinkly-nose face I tend to get when bands release records which sound so instantly and comfortably at home in their existing canon.  But then, given I can hardly ever really make out the lyrics of a Horse Feathers album I suppose I tend to listen to the whole thing as if it were some sort  of aural bath – just sinking into the warm, enveloping sound and letting the sins of the day slough away.

Musically they manage to evoke both the uncomfortable folk tales which might have sprung from the murky woodland of Oregon state, and the warm, comforting embrace which might comfort a child woken from sleep with the nightmares such folk tales might seed.

Musically, this is just very, very lovely stuff, for the most part.  It lists gently into the slightly disturbed here and there, but in general the gentle rise and fall of the music is akin to dozing against a loved one’s chest as it rises and falls with the slow breathing of a deep sleep, or of lying in a boat gazing up at the sky as it bobs on a gentle swell.

That may not sound like much of a recommendation – ‘pshaw! lullabye music’, if you’re feeling cynical – but there is a very distinctive character to Horse Feathers’ music.  Justin Ringle’s vocals may not be all that decipherable, but they are very lovely nonetheless, and the way the strings switch from being sawed to being carressed and back is also rather beautiful.  In the end, I think of this album less as a collection of songs, I suppose, more as a place to go from time to time when I need to feel what Thistled Spring makes me feel.  Lovely stuff once again.

Horse Feathers – Belly of June

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Horse Feathers – The Drought

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Is it right to call this American chamber-folk? I’m not always so good withy the pithy and largely meaningless generalisations, but I guess if you were looking for a box to put this in, then that might be the one.

Horse Feathers first album was much more about plucked strings and banjo than this, which really emphasises the cello and violin, and they twist together in a kind of luxuriant, swirling dance. It’s at once sleepy and romantic, grand and spare. Listening to this record, Horse Feathers seem to have developed a knack of waiting until just when you have decided that you are listening to a sparse, gentle song, before everything suddenly wells up from the silence and spills out around you. Then just as you adjust to this, it’s pack to a gently picked cello and whispered vocals again.

Despite these lovely elements, however, I must say that I regard this record with a little bit of equivocation. As much as it is gorgeous, it seems for me to lack something, although I doubt I would be able to entirely pin down what that is. Maybe I find myself almost feeling like this is a musical exercise, rather than a mission. That’s a really mean thing to say, and it’s more than possible that this simply comes from me losing something in the translation, but while this album is truly gorgeous, I find myself liking it, not loving it.

Horse Feathers – Curs in the Weeds
Horse Feathers – A Burden The strings at the very end of this song are just magic.

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