For about a year I had been heckling Burly Time Records to send me the Bowerbirds’ Debut CD. I was continuously saddened when I received no reply. Imagine my shock and glee when it unexpectedly showed up in my mailbox sent from Dead Oceans Records. A label that has joined the Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar family in Bloomington, Indiana and is run by once Misra Records head. I had also just watched the PBS series Life of Birds and came away awed by the actual Bowerbird. Male Bowerbirds spend 9 months each year working on their bower in an attempt to attract females. Each bower has its own distinct decoration, which could contain red berries, green moss and snail shells laid out in piles in the large cave-like structures built with grass along the ground. Needless to say they are inspiring artists and a weighty name to live up to.

I waited a few days until I took a listen to the album, nervously worried that it wouldn’t match my built up expectations. Lucikly it did and I gladly offer a most sincere recommendation. In their early days, Bowerbirds were a duo--guitarist and principle songwriter Phil Moore and accomplished painter Beth Tacular on accordion and percussion. Before the recording of Hymns for a Dark Horse, Mark Paulson joined the band, adding piano, violin and percussion to their musical equation. However, Mark and Phil have played music together for years, in various incarnations, since they were in middle school, so it was not a surprising collaboration. Moore and Tacular currently reside in an AirStream trailer on the outskirts of Raleigh, NC, on a quiet plot of land that is completely off the grid.

All three members share intertwined vocal harmonies, and paired with the acoustic instrumentation, have conjured a mystical, gorgeous debut. The music itself is beautiful and intricately simple, with an interchanging narrator. The songs take on a story-telling feel that captures the listener from the on-set. I love this creativity in song-writing, which takes music out of a highly personal introspective tone and releases it for everyone to see and feel. Listening to the Bowerbirds feels like having great fiction come to life. Appropriately, the album starts with a lovely song about birth and a beautiful homage to the narrators mother. The songs continue on apologizing to plants and animals for all the destruction we have done as humans. There is no preaching in these songs, the narrator in part is making amends with his own role and in part simply offering the truth. War is briefly touched upon and then we find ourselves older, arm in arm with our lover, contently eating crabs alongside the sea. I can’t help but feel a hint of Pablo Neruda creeping in among these lines. Neruda had a deep love for the sea and his poems continuously use nautical metaphors masterfully to explain his ideas. He had two houses that overlooked the Pacific Ocean in his native Chile and his house in Santiago was designed to feel as if he were in a ship with water rushing around the outsides of the rooms. I imagine him sitting on his deck atop the hill in Viña Del Mar overlooking the ocean taking inspiration from the vast beauty that lay ahead of him. A fluid landscape that lends itself so well to lyrical writing. A beauty mostly untouched by man. Water and sea are themes that run throughout Hymns for a Dark Horse and I would garner a guess that Moore finds the same beauty and inspiration from the sea as Neruda did. In an era of one track downloads and singles this album was crafted delicately and intelligently. Spanning from birth until death each track on Hymns for a Dark Horse is a joy to listen to.

Listen To Track: In Our Talons