Horse Feathers
House With No Home
(Kill Rock Stars, 2008)

You can’t really fault an acoustic folk group for making beautiful music, which is exactly what Horse Feathers have done. Driven by former Idahoan singer/songwriter Justin Ringle, the Portland trio weaves together safe, invigorating swells of autumnal violin, cello, banjo, and acoustic guitar for scarf-weather songs that catch glints of low sunlight through a desiccating cottonwood canopy. Gentle, soughing vocals harmonize and convey hopeful themes of love and loss, and it all stirs together like tea leaves in a morning blend; standard, though no less warming and pleasant.

For all its consistent features as stated above, it’s easy to enjoy House With No Home. There’s not much reason not to, especially for fans of the form whose libraries aren’t yet replete with its established peers. While it is of course not a competition, it’s also possible that Portland, OR—the current Americana capital of America—has reached its saturation point, or brought us to one nationwide with its overwhelming contribution, reminding us that music has to be more than simply beautiful to achieve longevity. By no fault of their own, Horse Feathers wanders up to the log cabin whose mailbox reads “Beam, Stevens, & Ward” and pulls some folding chairs out onto a porch already crowded by Vetiver and Bon Iver, with Laura Gibson and Marla Hansen gazing out the windows, Fleet Foxes in the foyer, Samamidon in the study, the Places burying something out back… you get the idea. It’s a big cabin.

Of course, there’s always room for one more, and Portland’s incredible music community loves to make everyone feel welcome and supported. The problem is that Horse Feathers’ easiness on the ear is ultimately a double-edged sword. By not asking much of its listeners, it runs the risk of failing to engage, and in the case of this reviewer at least, that’s what happened. While there doesn’t have to be anything weird or psychedelic or challenging about an album to make it great, it certainly doesn’t hurt, especially when it comes to critics whose job it is to analyze and evaluate. The lynchpin is that, while not particularly inventive, House With No Home also fails to bond through its straightforwardness due to a lack of clarity in the lyrics. Sure, the words are handwritten right there on the inlay, yet Ringle’s hushed vocal style swallows bits of every line, as if he’s singing to himself. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that either, though it renders the remnants a little tough to grab onto, and his tender susurration, while perfectly appealing, is (again) no revelation.

There’s about five seconds of acoustic cacophony softly superimposed over the steady melody in “Albina”, though other than that, songs remain placid and pretty. What remains to be seen is how they’ll carry on in the long run with Peter Broderick, the trio’s gifted multi-instrumentalist, apparently living in Copenhagen and focusing on solo material and collaborations with the Danish ensemble Efterklang. As for today, Horse Feathers have taken a page out of the illustrated book of acoustic beauty, and colored, with heart, inside the lines.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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