The clarity of two people with wide imagination and the musical boldness to make thrilling choices gives us something here that is about as unprecedented as you can get without leaving vernacular music behind altogether.
If you were to guess that Mariam Wallentin (singer) and Andreas Werliin (drummer) were Swedish from the sound alone you might reasonably be suspected of cheating. If the WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS were to be found a continent, then North America might be their most likely habitat. Free-form singing against a set of drums like that on "Bird" evokes some kind of cultural identification with indigenous American people (for me at least). But it's only a hint and it's America's diversity and its shifting, blending roots that are the dominant musical genes. At times Africa and sounds of the far East are clearly audible ("Lost Love" in particular has strong echoes of East Asia).
Each song in turn has Mariam Wallentin adopting a distinct sound and pattern for the vocals, while Werliin ranges across a very wide range of struck, scraped, tuned and untuned skins, blocks, cymbals, strings, hands drums and surfaces. Rhythmically things stay simple enough to sway or even dance to, but tones, textures and hints of melody provide a richer accompaniment than might be anticipated from "singer with drummer". On a more ambitious piece like "Doubt/Hope" it becomes clear that it's more vocalist/percussion duet rather than voice accompanied by percussion.
In "A Story From A Chair" the voice duets with itself, starting at almost a whisper against subtly played, minimalist glockenspiel, with tantalising scrapes added sparingly to the single clear notes. There is a pure innocence in the emotional feel that becomes more intense and more purposeful and the gentlest possible crescendo drops silent for a moment before "The Battle In Water" begins, at first with an echo of the glockenspiel and the icy silences between. But this song steadily turns into a far more sensual thing, with Werliin's voice, a bass and a piano added. The distance covered in the transition from the end of one song to the mid section of the next is extraordinary. The dynamics have not moved a great deal, but the emotions certainly have.
"The Ones That Should Save Me Get Me Down" is accompanied at first by a number of dry percussive sounds as Wallentin sings to a hunter of some kind "I listen to you, to all you say, I listen to you when you don't hear me" She cries for help with her tiredness, and then for rescue by her mother. The percussion disappears abruptly and the rest of the song, with calls for her father and the rest of her family, is sung alone, with only the slightest ambient resonance for company. "Oh I feel so lonely, I am the one and only" is a very forlorn ending, with (as happens frequently on this album), a sensation that this has been improvised, or at least experienced as new music, at the moment of its expression. It's an exquisite and fragile sensation.
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Whatever the technical attributes of what we are offered (and it is all beautifully performed and sung), the reaction can't fail to be emotional. The generous acceptance of silences into the mix leaves plenty of opportunities for the listener to inhabit and to fill up with their own emotional needs. I was particularly moved by Wallentin's long soaring notes and the hesitant breaths of a pedalled harmonium in the final "We Hold Each Other Song". Made in two parts, this considerable track ends on a very grand tune sung as if into the ceiling of a very tall room.
And if this all sounds a bit twee for you, I should also point out the very funky feel on "The Way Things Go", a song that would slip neatly into any acid-jazz repertoire just as it is. I do not get the impression that WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS are going to be short of ideas and developments. On the evidence of this CD they have much to offer and plenty of points at which an audience could get hooked into their world. Another is already lined up, apparently.
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