Review: Bowerbirds’ Upper Air
by Jarret Green ~ July 9th, 2009. Filed under: Music.
Sonically, 2009 has been a densely populated environment full of stimuli. Most of the critically-acclaimed artists (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Bat for Lashes) are often overwhelmingly layered, even though many of these artists are making their most accessible work ever. IF has no shortage of love for these albums, but everyone needs a vacation now and then, right?
Might we suggest Bowerbirds for your ears’ summer holiday? There are plenty of snapshot-worthy sights; they’re just not stacked on top of each other like at some dirty, tourist-filled theme park. If Merriweather Post Pavilion and Bitte Orca are Disneyland, Upper Air, Bowerbird’s sophomore effort, is Shenandoa National Park.
Like the afformentioned members of their generation, the duo is instrumentally diverse (Upper Air features organ, autoharp, violin, etc.), but the aural cameos are spread out, each one waiting like a lone fawn in a vast prairie or the one sunrise you’ll watch this year. For example, the building-heartbeat kick drum of “Silver Clouds” doesn’t appear till three-and-a-half minutes in.
Bowerbirds cover much of the same musical territory as Bon Iver and Will Oldham, but rather than sounding like ghosts that haunt your weird uncle’s cabin in the woods, Bowerbirds are your friend that always brings his acoustic guitar to the bonfire, only infinitely more talented.
Upper Air also taps thoughts of the Rosebuds (vocally), The Dodos (percussionally, such as on the chilling “Crooked Lust”), and Sun Kil Moon and Fleet Foxes (lyrically), while they have cousins that visit, Bowerbirds really seem like the boy-and-girl pair of children of a family that’s basically cut off from the fast-paced (and cliché) contemporary music right now. Not only are they light-years away from anything auto-tuned or remixed, Bowerbirds don’t feel the need to layer on “studio” magic.
The final product may be deceptively organic, but this is what unapologetic intimacy should sound like. One listen to Upper Air, and we think you’ll agree.