Bowerbirds preview

Bowerbirds
Schubas, Chicago
Sunday, July 20, 2008

This backwoods-dwelling, North Carolinian trio emerge for another road trip, supporting the re-release of their homespun debut.

Alt-country reinvigorated critics who specialize in authenticity. Hymns For A Dark Horse (Dead Oceans), created under self-imposed, Walden Woods-like circumstances, will surely deepen the debate and drag in the freak folkies. Not only will it be used against idealist cityfolk in San Francisco and Brooklyn, but Bowerbirds themselves will come under attack for playacting in an era of The World Without Us.

Hymns evokes the night sky — whether you can see stars in your neighborhood or not. Doesn’t mean it’s a pretty album, of course; the detuned piano under “Human Hands” causes just as many unsettled sensations as Phil Moore’s lyrical admiration for nature’s indiscriminate chaos. There are politics, though they’re indirect; Bowerbirds’ dedication to the land does not bank on a fake nostalgia for simpler human times, and they refrain from shape-note singing and work songs. Yet they allow space for spirituality, one that pioneers a sort of Buddhist love song (“Bur Oak,” “Slow Down”) and isn’t completely at war with man-made things (“Ticonderoga”). Their limitations may have been largely their own constructs, but the authenticity of Bowerbirds’ reaction to them is unimpeachable.

The Thin Man and I Ching Quartet open.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to download “In Our Talons.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly