Bowerbirds: becalmyounglovers | [Psychic Hotline; April 30]
“I swear I had the clearest mind / Day or night / But nothing lasts forever,” Phil Moore sings, sadly wistful during the crescendos on “Every Life,” summing up, in the record’s final song, the mood of Bowerbirds’ first proper album since 2012.
These aren’t the same Bowerbirds that stood at the fore of the Triangle’s burgeoning indie folk scene nine years ago.
Most obviously, the band is no longer a duo. Moore is now the group’s only permanent member, he and Beth Tacular having dissolved their romantic and musical partnership.
The 12 meditations on the album, named becalmyounglovers, center on wounds, healing, and transformation and feel the toll of that uncoupling—and the uncertainty of carrying on as a solo act what was once a team effort.
“It was a difficult decision,” Moore says, when asked about continuing on without Tacular. “I’d been sitting on these songs for a while. There was kind of a point in time where it didn’t feel right to release it as Bowerbirds maybe for like a couple, three years…. And so I just kind of waited on it. Eventually time heals all wounds, they say, and it kind of got to that point. I got Beth’s blessing to do so.”
Bowerbirds started playing in 2006 and quickly garnered a respectable national following and critical plaudits on the heels of its 2007 debut, Hymns for a Dark Horse.
Two subsequent albums, 2009’s Upper Air and 2012’s The Clearing, arrived via big-time indie label Dead Oceans. All three records carved out a peaceful vibe that was still remarkably passionate, finding solace in the consistency and cycles of the natural world.
becalmyounglovers is less confident in solace. The first song was written eight years ago, before Moore and Tacular parted ways, but the remaining Bowerbird says that, when he listens, it “kind of captured that whole trajectory for me.” Meanwhile, several songs do circle the direct impact of the breakup.
“Tell me, tell me darling / Is it just a phase somehow?” Moore begs amid the nervy, rickety sway of “Moon Phase.” “Or will I never know your warmth again / On the dark side now?”
The more shattering quality for longtime Bowerbirds listeners is the diminished certainty in the resilience of the natural world. Previous songs found serenity in the idea that our environment will outlive us. That’s changed on becalmyounglovers, where desperation and confusion are prevailing emotions.
On “All This Rain,” Moore watches a storm—“There’s a hurricane in the Carolinas / Otherwise, never safer”—offering his thoughts over shy piano. Where previous Bowerbirds songs might have marveled at the many forms nature’s beauty can take, this song keys on the irony that there’s “All this rain and the well is dry.”
“Put the body down for the evening,” Moore sings. “Don’t you want to live? Well I’m guessing I do.”
For Moore, the unsteadied vibe of becalmyounglovers is about more than a breakup. Now a father to his and Beth’s seven-year-old child, he’s a different person than he was when he transitioned from his previous band, Ticonderoga, to Bowerbirds. He lives in a different world.
“I often think about, like, is it just 20 years has passed? Or is it, like, my age? Or is it, like, that the world is changing?” he says, outlining his alarm at how the next couple decades may unfold for humanity and the planet, and the need for widespread systemic change.
“My worldview has been quite a bit more shaken in the most recent years, and this last year in particular,” Moore continues. “It’s hard to look back on those old records and be like, I love the person that was singing those records and respect him a lot, but I wonder, you know? I don’t think that that’s me anymore.”
The sound of becalmyounglovers appropriately embodies the notion that you can’t go home again, even if you can get close. It lumbers and lunges with an elegant primitivism similar to Bowerbirds’ Hymns for a Dark Horse. But where that album was steeped in rustic, rugged sounds, becalmyounglovers is dominated by smoothly electrified guitars. The approach is well-suited to Bowerbirds’ percussive sense of melody, though it does come across more bruised.
Still, Moore was able to find comfort in one thing that hasn’t changed—the deep well of talented friends he could tap to help him record. He speaks with excitement about getting to work with drummer Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver, The Rosebuds), bassist Alex Bingham (Hiss Golden Messenger, T. Gold) and multi-instrumentalist and singer Libby Rodenbough (Mipso). Rodenbough’s harmonies are particularly strong on the record, going a long way toward making the album feel like Bowerbirds.
“It’s such an amazing part of the Triangle scene, I don’t know how I would move anywhere else,” Moore says of his musical community. “Even just with the friendships around here between musicians. That’s just part of the whole thing. I can’t consider another place home.”
As to what comes next, the Bowerbird isn’t keen on going back to touring 100 or 200 dates a year as the group once did in their heyday. He thinks more songs will come, but he doesn’t think he’ll get right back to releasing two EPs and an LP in less than a year, as he has now done between 2020 and 2021. As on the new album, certainty for the project’s future is in short supply, but Moore seems content to let things happen as they will.
“I’m just kind of seeing what shakes out,” he says. “It’s such a weird time that it’s refreshing to release this record now. I think a lot of my fellow musicians, as they release records, they’re like, ‘Oh, man, what do I do now?’ Whereas I’ve taken this big break. This is a baby step for me.”
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