Loose Record :: So You Know What You're Missing

Bowerbirds walk towards their airstream trailer, point out how beautiful the fresh snow looks covering everything, and open the screened door to go inside and write about this moment. They tell long stories about their friends talents and abilities, and thank them profusely on their website…all in all they seem like downright nice people.

I can't imagine how long this is going to last...why do I feel sad about them already? Unless they stay locked up forever in that trailer or have the musical stubbornness of Tom Waits they are inevitably going to change. The only reason I worry is right at this moment they are so perfect.

The show at Mercury Lounge was a flawless example. The weather certainly wasn't encouraging anyone to make the trip, but those who did witnessed the rare stripped down, humble performance of a downright genius album Hymns for a Dark Horse and a few new untitled worthy ones. Absent were cymbals, or any percussion on the recorded album apart from the giant bass drum in the middle of the stage played by Beth or Marc with mallets, alternately hitting the edge with the stick between booming hits, wearing a hole into the side. In their place was a harpsichord and a midi foot pedal contraption connected to a blinking box adding ominous swelling bass chords underneath the shining high nylon acoustic guitar and vibrato violin notes.

Phil Moore is a virtuoso in his ability to separate the lyric melody from his acoustic accompaniment; it’s two separate entities playing apart, all the while the minimal instrumentation providing a pedestal for the flawless cautionary verse.

They never said anything to break this fantasy of an exceptional gypsy band just arrived out of the backwoods, completely alien to any kind of scene. They played one song after another to a hushed crowd, so quiet you could hear the clicking of the paparazzi in the front row lined up, flashing photo after photo.

The thing that keeps these songs compelling is this contrast between the simple sound of real instruments and the primal savagery of the content....living things conspire against each other, everything is going to decay and I don't know how hopeful we really can be in the end.

Politics aside, they seem to be saying we are pretty much destined, not necessarily to screw it all up, or even knowingly have a choice in the matter, but that there's something inevitable about the way we're constructed and continue to live that isn't going to lead to a happy ending.

I think it's their ability to carefully describe a place and feeling very particularly that gives them a truly unique sound. Coupled with Phil's vocals, Bowerbirds paint not a pretty picture but the reality of nature so reverentially that I'll go down listening with the whole beautiful awful mess on repeat.