Were it not for the frigid beauty of "House With No Home", one might assume that Justin Ringle suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or at the very least is acutely sensitive to planet earth's yearly revolution. For as much as has been made of the springtime vibes of "Thistled Spring", there really is no getting past it. In fact, I don't think I've ever come across such an appropriate description for an album (putting aside the standard "Best of" and unimaginatively self-titled efforts). For if "House With No Home" glistened with a crystalline frostiness akin to pure, lately settled snow, musically "Thistled Spring" courses with a natural warmth and an at times breezy abandon of a fresh wind rustling through the trees.
The title track plays out as a transition piece, luring the "House With No Home" veterans in with crisp, wintry piano chords that give way quickly to sweet and light violins that dive and swoon like swallows in the eaves. The piano hangs over like the dusting of icing sugar-like snow on a distant mountain, sun-kissed and rosy in the dusk. The dynamics of the piece are quite stunning. The difference between mezzo-forte and mezzo-piano. The subtle bowing. The gentle attention to and accommodation for the softness of Ringle's slightly weary voice. It's achingly beautiful, a bucolic paean to a pleasant spring evening, just on the cusp of summer. It's a track that fits well within the winsome Horse Feathers sound, but with an added dose of grandeur similar to that of Craig Armstrong's Romeo and Juliet theme. And it's not long before some of Ringle's own ill-fated lovers make an appearance.
"Belly Of June" is an altogether spicier tune, an energetic ditty in which Ringle plugs in his guitar and leads with a frisky melody that skips and hops like rabbits from a warren. The violin is never far away - ditto the banjo -, but it's through Ringle's worn mumbling of "In a June that up and bloomed and quickly died/between the two and under the sun/it's a war that's always fought and is never won" that we realise that all isn't well underneath Horse Feather's rustically serene facade. A tale of love that talks of the birds and bees, it soon becomes apparent that despite not sharing a rib, the relationship is just as cursed as the Bible's first couple.
Indeed, as with many things in life, appearances can be deceiving. "Cascades" starts off slowly, almost stately, but develops into a deeply troubling tale of stolen embraces and broken nooses which gushes forth and froths over into urgent strings, a maelstrom of swirling, troubling images ("We kiss on the mouth/with hearts that were bound and gagged") and cymbals crashing against each other like foaming water on the rocks. A meadow full of flowers shouldn't appear sinister, but such is the dark tone of the song that Ringle's line of "Do you remember me?/ 'Cause there's a piece of my mind/in a field of dandelions" leaves one wondering quite what happened in this patch of yellow-headed weeds.
Not even the gentle allure of the title track can hide its unsettling lyrics; an opening gambit of "An old love of mine to wed the worst man she finds/A blossom that's bloomed/in a house that's a tomb/trapped in the rhododendron fumes" adds a decidedly Poe-like American gothic to the already present Americana. It is perhaps Ringle's juxtaposition of musical themes and ideas that is the most unsettling, the claustrophobia of the lyrics throwing the listener's mind off-balance as the music's spacious, uncluttered elegance leads the heart to rest.
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And at rest it stays until the mid-point on the album, when it rises, bidden from its repose by track five. "This Bed" is nothing less than the blossoming (to pursue the springtime theme) of the Horse Feathers sound. A magnificent, airy, joyous celebration of organic beauty, energy surges through its very fibre. The wood of the instruments sounds like it's breathing as life sweeps through the song. The orchestral swell at around the 2.30 mark is truly goose-bump inducing, as is Ringle's cathartic cry of release towards the end. To put it mildly, it is the best thing that the band have ever produced.
And as the moisture is sucked from the parched land, so too does "The Drought" suck the joy from Ringle's broken spirit. On the surface it's a banjo-strumming, tambourine-tapping foot-stomper that would bring the barn down at any country fayre. Take a closer listen however, and at its heart you uncover a campfire sing-along to Ringle's anti-rain dance, as the season's drought crushes his already abject spirit: "It's bearing down on me/no clouds in the sky/I hear the pines crack and cry/there's no reason to try".
By "The Widower", Ringle's deeply painful themes of love and loss have bloomed (or should that be shrivelled?) into expansive and spirit-destroying sorrow. A soft, delicately picked guitar melody supports the tottering gentleman, a widower damning the unremitting winter and desperately awaiting greener leaves and happier times. The billowing minor chords swoop and soar as the broken soul pleads with his dearly departed, "Stay awhile with me/warm a body that aches here in these sheets alone/I will not find another of your kind/I hold this true/I will not be a husband that's set free, I said I do". Rarely has personal suffering sounded so crushing or… well, beautiful.
The 14th June for most people would signal the onset of hotter days. Every year the "sound of summer"TM is loudly and proudly proclaimed, usually in the same breath as an ice-cold Corona and that year's newest and coolest festival. But you know what? I think I'll stick with this sound of (thistled) spring. It may be prickly, a time of death, rebirth, loss and suffering, and a little chilly at times, but it's never anything less than magnificently glorious. To be left "in a spring with no end", to paraphrase "Thistled Spring", really is no bad thing at all, provided of course that it's a springtime of Ringle's making.
Horse Feathers on MySpace
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