Breathe Owl Breathe

Magic Central

(Hometapes)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Michigan’s Breathe Owl Breathe are not new on the scene – they’ve been together since 2004 – but they are admittedly/unfortunately new to these ears.  To say that Magic Central is the sound of a band that has arrived, a band that has crystallized, is not meant, then, to scold the trio’s past work, but rather to celebrate the new.  Their sound/vision/identity/whatever just feels fully executed.  It’s neither the weightiest nor the most revolutionary album you’ll be apt to hear this fall, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find indie-pop that’s more engaging or better crafted. 

There’s an organic folksiness to the trio that’s perhaps to be expected for a band that’s set up camp in the woods of Michigan.  Nature is a recurring muse.  Despite the wintry-looking album cover and song titles like “Icy Cave Dancers,” though Magic Central is anything but a glacially paced or emotionally frozen album.  Instead, the mood is kept warm and light, even on the quieter stretches.  The gentle “Across the Loch” sounds like a not-so-distant cousin of Yo La Tengo (when YLT is in their And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out sort of mood).  That’s about as far as that shadow goes, aside from the general indie guy-gal vocal interplay (Micah Middaugh and Andrea Moreno-Beals are great together).

Middaugh is the main man at the center of Breathe Owl Breathe.  In his formative years, he discovered Jonathan Richman; while his own band doesn’t ape Richman and the Modern Lovers, a lesson about playfulness seems to have resonated.  This is apparent throughout Magic Central, but particularly on the fanciful tall tale “Dragon,” a story of a princess who is unwittingly pen pals with a dragon.  It begins: “You are a princess and we are pen pals / I’m a dragon, but you don’t need to know that / I’ve been working on my penmanship.”  A flight of fancy, to be sure, but Middaugh deftly walks the line between clever and cloying, never pushing it too far – and keeping even stories about dragons grounded with disarming lyrics and emotional nuance.