A Weather (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part II)

2010 was a great year for A Weather fans, as the Portland-based indie-folk outfit released the wonderful Everyday Balloons. Speaking of future plans and a place in Maine I definitely have to visit, Aaron Gerber and Aaron Krenkel live up to their band’s quiet reflections as they ponder the year gone by. (Photo by Mary Gerber)

SCQ: Every list-lover's favourite question: what are your top albums of 2010? Feel free to include any older yet worthy records you discovered this year.

AK: Hmmm... in terms of new music... I really like the National's record, High Violet. I haven't listened to a ton of new things. The Vetiver record, Tight Knit, really grew on me, but I don't even know what year that's from. A friend's band, Roofwalkers, from DC self-released a really great record. Otherwise I've gotten really into a lot of older African music, reissues of Nigerian jazz/rock fusion things and stuff like that, which is kind of funny because it's not really much related to music we play. I read Pitchfork and a few other sites a lot and like a lot of the music they review, but have a hard time deciding what to really pay attention to.

SCQ: What were you listening to a lot of while recording your excellent album Everyday Balloons?

AG: I didn’t listen to anything specific while the actually recording was happening, as I usually find it best to insolate myself from other music while working on my own. I do remember listening to some stuff in the months before going into the studio including some old stand bys: Leonard Cohen, The Vaselines, Nick Drake, and some newer Portland bands: Point Juncture WA, Laura Gibson, Chores.

SCQ: Be cocky for once in your life: what was the finest thing you did all year? That moment where you actually thought "shit, I nailed that..."?

AG: Aaron (Krenkel) urged me to mention a roasted pork loin with a rosemary and garlic crust that I prepared last winter. I’ve become proficient at cooking large chunks of meat this year.

SCQ: Effect and Cause: I picked out an engagement ring in early August and found your album waiting in the mail for me when I returned home. That night, I spun songs like 'No Big Hope' and 'Lay Me Down' on repeat as if I was thirteen years old playing mix-tapes of radio favourites. Okay, your turn: confess a true tale that inspired one of the songs from Everyday Balloons.

AG: The song “Giant Stairs” sprung from revisiting a place in Maine called (surprisingly enough) Giant Stairs. It’s a formation of huge slabs of rock that form steps down to the ocean. It’s a place I often go when I return to Maine and the song is, in part, about this idea of returning. None of my music is overly biographical or narrative so this is the best I can do to answer your question.

SCQ: If all the reasonable and implausible ideas in your head came to fruition in 2011, what would they be?

AG: Hmm. I’d like to record another record at some point, as I have amassed a fair amount of new songs. There are some non-band related plans that I am interested to see develop. We have been on a hiatus for the past few months so I look forward to reconvening as a band again and hearing new things happen between us. (Could I be more vague?)

Everyday Balloons - A Weather

Everyday Balloons

A Weather
Team Love Records.

SCQ Rating: 82%

Despite featuring three brilliant stand-alone tracks, Cove narrowly missed landing on Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s Top Twenty Albums of 2008. It was a contentious decision for both sides of my evaluation protocol; the listener who’d let A Weather slide into his personal slipstream all year cried for a recount while the objective voice reasoned with several exhibits’ worth of tighter records. Alas, even two years on, Cove is an easier album to live and empathize with than to hype and pamphleteer over. What felt slightly undercooked between expertly arranged ballads like ‘Shirley Road Shirley’ or ‘Oh My Stars’ were the defeated odes that weren’t a drag so much as a light humming beneath our alertness.

Cove’s humble force – tender songwriting with understated arrangements – shines more brightly on Everyday Balloons, a sophomore that expands the group’s emotional reach without ringing false to their casually low-key approach. Even at their staunchly modest core, A Weather convey grander ideas at a sneaky pace; both ‘Third Of Life’, with its punchier electric chords, and ‘Newfallen’, a lounge-y track that sounds surprisingly like early Jens Lekman, hint at these bolder directions. Beyond laying clues to more effusive songwriting, vocalists Aaron Gerber and Sarah Winchester get full-on extroverted with ‘Winded’, a lighthearted piano jaunt that resonates at the chorus, and ‘Giant Stairs’, which subtly brings out a post-grunge shuffle not unlike cult-faves The Rentals. As with Cove, these sweeping compositions overshadow a few quieter ruminations that prefer close listening. ‘Seven Blankets’ is a deservedly narcoleptic display of dulled guitar tones and sleepy percussion; if you’re a fan of A Weather, you’ll fall right into it.

Few things are as comforting as A Weather sounding perfectly at home with their craft and, despite the aforementioned songwriting upgrades, Everyday Balloons works best picking up where Cove left off. The melancholic folk of ‘No Big Hope’ is eternalized by Gerber and Winchester’s soft vocal-collisions whereas ‘Lay Me Down’ builds from a stationary vision into a percolating, imperative rock number. Like an old friend, it’s wonderful to have A Weather back; they’ve gone traveling, they’ve gathered some touching stories to share, but when you sit down with them, they’re the same promising band you last visited with.

Cove - A Weather

Cove

A Weather
Team Love Records.


SCQ Rating: 78%

Nothing will grab you about Cove if you’re not listening for it. There’s nothing particularly striking about Aaron Gerber or Sarah’s Winchester’s vocals either; his Sufjan-esque earnestness rarely wises above a mumble, whereas her voice could be just about anybody’s. Yet once you’ve heard the record four or five times (which isn’t hard to do, trust me), a chemistry between Gerber and Winchester ignites – one part subtlety, one part intimacy – that beefs up these songs; the way her voice hovers over his off-kilter, punctuating lyrics in ‘Pinky Toe’ or when they trade off lyrics, verse by verse, as in the power-pop of ‘Small Potatoes’. It’s when you let your guard down that these nine quiet songs creep up on you, leading to sudden stare-offs in parks or passenger seats.

The arrangements are most striking in their barrenness, focusing almost entirely on guitar, electric piano and the heavy thudding of Winchester’s drums. You’re never unaware of a sudden organ humming in the corner of your speaker (on ‘It’s Good to Know’), or an extra acoustic ruminating in the shadow of the other (the beautiful ‘Shirley Road Shirley’). Such stark recordings render every moment notable, and that these songs sport enough muscle to justify their expansive time-slots (most hovering around five minutes) says something for A Weather’s songwriting prowess. ‘Spiders, Snakes’ illustrates this patience-pays-off aesthetic perfectly, opening the disc with a painfully slow pound of a drum-beat, the vocals and keyboard shuffling within the confines of that percussive dirge, which is then temporarily set free by a chorus, featuring simple guitar and the duo letting their voices rise beyond a mesmerized chant.

This strict obedience to song structure would damn most quiet, emotively acoustic bands, and it’s an obstacle that A Weather don’t successfully clear on every song. ‘Pilot’s Arrow’ lacks any of the record’s tension, and because that strain is one of the band’s great strengths, the song is visibly weaker. There are other slight flaws but they’re hard to pinpoint, as if you’re ready to judge it before a chord changes and suddenly that flaw turns out to be right as rain. The folky, organic flow of Cove feels painted in greens and grays; ideal for approaching April, but because it’s all cut from the same palette, its lulls threaten to become dull more than once.

Regardless, this record is fresh, if not sonically than certainly lyrically. Gerber gives us romance from tiny moments, dissecting the sounds a lover makes in the night (‘Oh My Stars’) or daring a friend to leave her clothes on his bedroom floor. Sung plainly without poetry, Gerber’s daydreams illustrate these unassuming tunes with deeper resonance. Released tomorrow on Conor Oberst-associated Team Love Records, A Weather might be the moody breeze to carry us sensitive folk-sters into the Spring, or anyone still crying over American Analog Set breaking up.

Listen to A Weather here.