Articles
2009 Artists' Picks
Lymbyc Systym

Albums
Cory Allen
aus
The Bird Ensemble
Canaille
Catlin & Machinefabriek
Greg Davis
Loren Dent
Dirac
Drafted By Minotaurs
Flica
Sarah Goldfarb & JHK
Gown
John Hollenbeck
Viviane Houle
I/DEX
Akira Kosemura
Andrew McKenna Lee
Le Lendemain
LRAD
Lymbyc Systym
Melorman
Muskox
The Mercury Program
Nikasaya
Northerner
nörz
Noveller / Aidan Baker
Redshape
Marina Rosenfeld
Stripmall Architecture
Sturqen
Wes Willenbring
The Tony Wilson Sextet
Julia Wolfe
Peter Wright
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Blackoperator
Glimpse Four:Twenty 03
Kod.eX
Portland Stories

EPs
Molnbär Av John
Tommi Bass & B.B.S.C.
Julian Beau
Colours-Volume 5
Dalot
Echologist
Simon James French
Geiom & Shortstuff
General Elektriks
Geskia
Ernest Gonzales
Gradient
Jacksonville
Joker
Ann Laplantine
Loko
Machinefabriek
Stefano Pilia
Damian Valles

The Bird Ensemble: Evensong
Happy Prince

For those who prefer their post-rock more elegant and restrained than epic and bombastic, there's The Bird Ensemble. Eschewing the soft-loud extremes and peaks-and-valleys that listeners have come to associate with MONO and Explosions In The Sky, The Bird Ensemble charts a course characterized by lesser dynamic contrast yet one nevertheless intricately designed. The group members—guitarists Michael Hix and Kyle Williams (who met at Nashville's Belmont University in 2005), keyboardist Cara Pollock, bassist Charlie McClain, and drummer Brandon Duncan—also opt for a largely natural-sounding blend of chiming guitars, bright piano melodies, and robust drumming, with the nine pieces on the group's second full-length feeling like live takes free of electronics or post-editing.

The stately intro “Bop Bop (in memoriam)” and “A Fool's Errand” are decent enough openers, but the album kicks into higher gear with the advent of “The Glamour of Noble Poses” where a mood of controlled euphoria is bolstered by some lovely piano playing. “Oaxaca Variation No.1” then makes good on its promise with a guitar-fueled trek that segues between high-spirited gallops and episodes of plaintive reverie. Other post-rock outfits would do well to study “The Wayside” and “Canopy Summer” for lessons in well-modulated group interplay and dynamics and “Broken Fields” for an example of just how powerful—transcendent even—a dreamy chord progression can be when executed with care. If there's a downside, it's that Evensong doesn't advance the established post-rock template to any radical degree, nor does it ever work up too great a sweat during its forty-three minutes. What it does do, however, is illustrate that there's room for a sublety in a genre that all too readily latches onto the aforementioned loud-soft model as if there's no other.

January 2010