Sometimes the sound of a band carries with it an entire suitcase full of atmosphere, an echo of the place, time, and even the climate where the album was created. While it certainly doesn’t always rain in Oregon, the band A Weather brings to mind what most of us think of when we imagine the Pacific Northwest. Their album Cove, released on March 4th on Team Love Records, is a cool breeze off gray water; it’s a subtle masterpiece of hushed harmonies, introspective lyrics, atmospheric melodies, and the feeling of summer storms sweeping down city streets. It’s a sound that puts you down exactly where you are, smiling on the curb, watching the clouds overhead scudding by. In short, it’s a distinctly Portland album.

And so it should be. A Weather is the product of five Portland-based musicians: Frontman Aaron Gerber, singer/drummer Sarah Winchester, bassist Lou Thomas, guitarist Aaron Krenkel, and guitarist Zach Boyle. On some songs they bear more than a passing resemblance to the late Carissa’s Wierd, with the same basis in complementing male and female vocals with a shuffle of moody rhythm. But the resemblance is only a passing one; the truth is A Weather has a distinct sound that isn’t quite like anything else. From the first track to the last, the songs are surprising without dropping out of character; they sound like something you’ve heard before but couldn’t place, like something you were searching for without realizing it was missing.

The members are old pros even while they’re young faces; all have been involved in previous music projects from early ages. “The first band I was in was called Grey Vision,” says Gerber, who grew up in Maine. “I was 14-years-old and X-Files was at the height of its popularity. We were a pretty bad grunge band. The singer was a twentysomething Navy guy who had all the angst that I, as a 14-year-old, should have had but didn’t. When Grey Vision ground to a halt in ’97 or so, the drummer, Jon, and I formed a new band with a couple of friends. I was thankfully finished with grunge music and getting into stuff like Shudder to Think, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth. Jon turned me on to the whole ‘slowcore’ movement (I’m not sure if that is the proper appellation), bands like Bedhead, Yo La Tengo, Galaxy 500, Ida, etc. So we started playing this sort of stuff. Long, flowing, fuzzy guitar songs with fleeting moments of mumbled lyrics.”

In college, by the year 2000, Gerber stopped playing in bands for awhile and did some experimentation with electronic music (recorded as a project called Six Twilights and eventually released by a Luxembourg label). It was only upon his move to Portland that he returned to traditional music. During those early days in town, Gerber attended a house show with longtime friend Zoe Wright where one of the performers was Winchester. The three began playing together in what Gerber considers the earliest incarnation of A Weather. After a few sets, they eventually attracted the other members of the band through an amusing series of coincidences, MySpace contacts, and Craigslist. When Wright moved back to the East Coast in early 2007, the current A Weather lineup was solidified.

Just a short time later, things began to happen. As Gerber explains it, “Aaron [Krenkel, guitarist] told his brother Nate about us and sent him a link to our MySpace page. He said that Nate, who owned a small label in New York, was interested in hearing more and if we wanted to send him a CD we could. If not, no big deal. ‘Hmm,’ I thought, ‘a label in New York wants us to send them a CD. Tough decision.’ I sent it off, probably the next day. In a couple weeks Nate emailed us back saying that he and Conor both thought it would be a good idea to put out a 7” if we wanted.” The small label mentioned, of course, is Team Love Records; with the blessings of label co-owners Krenkel and Conor Oberst, A Weather was on their way.

By summer 2007, the band was in the studio to record Cove. In order to get the sound they wanted, they enlisted the help of producer Adam Selzer. “When Adam said that he was interested in working with us, I told him that I wanted it to sound really roomy and live, like Beheaded by Bedhead, and he knew what I meant,” says Gerber. “I don’t think that the record achieves this exactly, but there is a good sense of real people playing in real rooms that you can’t get when recording massive overdubs one at a time on Pro Tools in your bedroom. Adam’s production has the right mix of cleanliness and roughness, if that makes sense.”