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Music
Hot disc: Woodpigeon, Die Stadt Muzikanten
Photography by Lindsey Baker
Woodpigeon is often compared to Sufjan Stevens and Belle & Sebastian, which could have something to do with what follows. Woodpigeon’s third LP, Die Stadt Muzikanten (Boompa), offers some of the happiest sad songs we’ve heard in a while. Writing in a small Berlin apartment, Calgarian songwriter Mark Andrew Hamilton started “thinking in terms of couples, of people coming and going, of walls and windows,” he says.
Opening with its title track, with wistful tin-can vocals, record pops and crackles, jingly piano, horn dirges and swooning strings (lots of stuff), Muzikanten assumes an unassuming contradiction—of happy/sad, stasis/movement and together/apart—between its simple lyricism and ample compositions.
Rising from choral refrains amidst guitar, accordions and keys, to violin solos and plucked cello climaxes, the album maintains an even keel over swells and tough chop, balancing its diverging components.
A driving frolic about sticking around and not being able to let go when you should, “My Denial in Argyle” suggests a standstill with lyrics like “Caught in the middle and there’s no escape, given the chance I wouldn’t run away.” But the song’s rhythm and electricity juxtapose with drive. So many melodies are so good that they draw you up from sad words.
Hitting on the anthemic, and charting more stasis (“hold on, make haste”), “Such a Lucky Girl” coalesces in pulsing mellotron, orchestral runs and elevated guitars that crescendo to full-band immediacy. Sung like a mantra, “And it’s all gonna work out all right,” Hamilton makes you want to believe things will resolve for his lovers, while you watch from outside their window, tapping your feet. This traps your heartstrings, like a good anthem should, only to let the air from its valves at the end.
Die Stadt Muzikanten is available for streaming at Woodpigeon’s website (woodpigeon-songbook.com) and retails with a bonus EP (boompa.ca).
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