Horse Feathers with Caroline Smith
Justin Ringle has turned out to be a songwriter strongly influenced by the seasons. His Portland, Oregon-based band’s last record, the critically acclaimed House With No Home, was a winter album par excellence, from its chilly cover art to its frostbitten songs of loneliness and loss.
But from the first piano notes of the title track, plinking like spring rain on a windowpane, Thistled Spring (to be released the day of this show--April 20 2010, Kill Rock Stars) shows itself to be an album of rebirth, renewal, and fragile hope. The sun is out in the world evoked by this music, and in the first couple of songs it feels like the sun of early spring, glinting on a frosty river where the ice is just breaking up. “Thistled Spring” and “Starving Robins” both continue Ringle’s trademark use of space in songwriting, but in this case the space is full of potential, like the spaces between drops of melting snow. The sun gets stronger and warmer as the album moves along, shining most brilliantly in the jaunty, joyous “Belly of June”, where Ringle’s characteristically spare vocals become fattened up with delicious harmonies as the music swells with strings and banjo. Things get positively hot in “Cascades” and “The Drought” before blossoming into the full-fledged pop Americana gem “Vernonia Blues”.
Thistled Spring as a whole displays a rich progression – more textured and lush than the band’s previous two albums, it also captures the skillful interplay of the band’s current touring lineup of Ringle, violinist Nathan Crockett, cellist Catherine Odell, and multi-instrumentalist Sam Cooper. Lyrically Ringle continues to explore broken relationships, longing, and pain, but this album has an undercurrent of heat that translates to a thawing of frozen hearts, and music which rushes like spring torrents, all of which points to a resurgence of life after a hard winter.
The band has spent the last two years touring, and their live shows are characterized by packed houses of silent, attentive crowds listening intently to every note and every empty space. Their recent collaboration with members of the Oregon Ballet Theatre met with great critical acclaim, and 2010 will bring further touring in the US and Europe, including SXSW and multiple summer festivals.
“Ultimately, that unworldliness may be Horse Feathers' greatest charm. Theirs is a life in the wilderness, not merely a sojourn.” – Stephen M Deusner. Pitchfork Media 9/29/2008
“Always keeping an ear open to contrast, Horse Feathers grasps the tension between spare arrangement and raw delivery on "Helen," "This Is What," and "Father," the strongest in a set of tunes that play as both stately and melancholy.” – Scott Gordon. The A.V. Club 9/16/2008
“Horse Feathers constructs music out of fragile whispers and half-remembered dreams, eagerly filling in the gaps between Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine on the American indie-folk continuum.” - Matt Fink. Paste Magazine 9/30/2008
Singer-songwriter Caroline Smith will open, performing as a duo.
Tickets are on sale now from the Cedar Ticketline (612-338-2674 ext 2), Cedar outlets, and online at Ticketweb.
After fronting several rock bands in his native Idaho, singer/songwriter Justin Ringle moved to Portland, OR in 2004 and began focusing on acoustic music, playing open mics regularly under the moniker Horse Feathers. In 2005, multi-instrumentalist Peter...
Caroline Smith is a singer-songwriter from Minneapolis, Minnesota who started recording and performing at age 15. She is perhaps better known as the front-woman for the up-and-coming indie folk group Caroline Smith And The Good Night Sleeps.
