A few Sundays ago, I sat with a group of friends at a bar before we all headed to the same show. Three of the five of us hadn't heard much from the band we were about to see, so they asked me to describe it.
Me: "Well, they're not going to change your life --"
Friend: "Why do you say that? You said that when you were describing another band, too."
I say that because most of the music I truly love does change my life. The highest calling for my most beloved musicians is that they touch my ears and my heart in a completely new way. They open up new worlds of possibility in my imagination. Their work can make me feel new sensations, emotionally and physically. When I hear, for the first time, an artist whose work will change my life, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever known.
Accordingly, it's not often that I find an artist that affects me this way. This is not to say that I don't enjoy a lot of music. In fact, I regularly discover new artists and uncover artists from the past whose music I love and who I rave about and recommend. But my life-changers? I only run across one of those artists once every year or two.
A few Fridays ago, I discovered another one*:
How did I find them? I was making a rare visit to Stereogum, paging through post after post about bands I don't care about -- new bands that are covered mostly because they're new and heaven forbid Stereogum not cover the next big [blank] -- when I saw My Brightest Diamond listed in one of the posts. Thinking it would take me to a live performance or news or a video by My Brightest Diamond, I clicked through only to discover it was a post where Shara Worden, aka MBD, talked up "a couple of her recent favorite outside sounds" in a series about bands from Sweden.
(A word of advice: whenever you get a chance to get recommendations from an artist you love, listen to them. It's the best kind of word of mouth.)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums are Mariam Wallentin (vocalist) and Andreas Werliin (drummer), a married couple from Sweden. Much of their music consists of spare arrangements of drumming and singing with only the occasional embellishment from another instrument. There isn't a whole lot written about Wildbirds & Peacedrums yet (at the time of this post, they have less than 3000 MySpace friends), but what's out there includes a whole lot of comparisons. You can drop names like The White Stripes (another two-person band), Joanna Newsom (it's just an occasional similarity in timbre), Karen O (I don't hear this one really) or PJ Harvey or Feist, but I promise you've never heard anything like Wildbirds & Peacedrums before.
"We had no musical ideals to trust or lean on, so we just had to believe in ourselves and each other"
- Werliin
Their album Heartcore is high art: it doesn't follow convention, it finds its own way, makes its own strange sense. It's not easy, but it feels right. It rewards the careful listener, blooming brighter with each successive spin. There are no signposts here; the terrain changes from one song to the next so you must be willing to get lost with them. Wallentin's voice is a universe unto itself, a true original.
After reading Shara's words about them that Friday night, I woke up the following morning and made a rare trip to Amoeba to buy their album. Thank you, Shara, for the tip, and thank you Amoeba for having one copy of Heartcore on vinyl.
I cannot wait to see this band perform live. Until then:
#9.2 Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Doubt Hope from Handheld Shows on Vimeo.
#9.1 Wildbirds & Peacdrums - The Window from Handheld Shows on Vimeo.
- Buy Wildbirds & Peacedrums Heartcore on vinyl from Insound.
- Related: My post about My Brightest Diamond's new album
*I'm not saying they'll change your life, I'm saying they're changing mine.