Horse Feathers

If Words Are Dead (a soon-to-be-released album from Portland duo Horse Feathers) were a room, it would be neat and uncluttered, but not cold. No, not cold. Generous with faded primary colors and a miscellany of patterns--stripes and checks and small-scale florals--its furniture would be a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs and lucky finds and at least one piece new-bought, given pride of place opposite the single window.

If it were a person, it would be my favorite kind of person. Smart and sharp and opinionated, witty and candid and earthy and able to tell a dirty joke well. But also modest and secretly shy and a little sad, though you don’t perhaps know why.

If it were a poem, it would be one of Emily Dickinson’s, tucking its hurt in the interstices of spare, telegraphic lines, stashing its cautious joy in understated acoustic guitar and banjo and pretty strings that sing of vast worlds of the unseen and unsung.

At the risk of making extravagant claims on behalf of something that would likely never make such claims for itself, Words Are Dead (due September 26 from Lucky Madison, see also Amazon) is one of the best albums this year. And because my own recommendation is rather feeble, know that Said The Gramophone and Aquarium Drunkard also posted songs from it just this morning. (And yes, normally that would stop me from posting something, but if I can get a few more people interested in the record, it's worth looking pathetically me-too-ish.)

Falling Through The Roof - Horse Feathers