A Weather Cove (Team Love)

[February 27th, 2008]

[WHISPER POP] Now and again you get in a musical rut, sticking with a few tried-and-true favorite albums instead of branching out for the next big thing. While everyone else is doing back flips over the Vampire Weekends of the world, those scratched-up, skipping old favorites are the only records that seem to really speak to you. “That’s it,” you think. “I’ll never like anything new again. I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.”

Then you stumble on something curious, like A Weather’s Cove. The Portland quintet’s songs are stitched together with cryptic relationship metaphors: nursery rhymes for adults that spell just enough out to pique the listener’s interest, while shrouding the rest in fog. Guitarist/vocalist Aaron Gerber and drummer/vocalist Sarah Winchester sing about arrows in flight, stubbed pinkie toes and small dancing birds. The pair trades half-whispers over a small, soft orchestra of sea-breeze organ and bells. The drums sound like rain, and the guitar is a smoke ring that rolls and finally disperses. And after you let it under your skin, you remember: Finding something that speaks your language is nice, but it’s far more rewarding to learn a new one altogether.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, A Weather pulled me out of a rut. I had liked the band since I first heard the previously released (via 7-inch) track “Oh My Stars,” on which Gerber’s voice dances with Winchester’s and spins a story of love and loss over a sleepy acoustic guitar: “Sometimes it’s hard/ Thinking about how the plans we made/ Won’t happen today or tonight.”

But it was “Shirley Road Shirley” that straightened me out. A Weather’s penchant for detailed free-association verse steps aside for a second to make room for the most emo line I’ve yet heard in 2008: “I just want to lie down with you/ I won’t try anything/ I swear, You won’t even know I’m there.” That was enough to awaken the messy, vulnerable 15-year-old I once was and kick him in the gut. More importantly, it served as an inlet to further examine A Weather’s less scrutable turns of phrase over the dark funk of “Spiders, Snakes” and the epic, Stereolab-esque “Pilot’s Arrow,” which both turn out be compelling story songs. You just have to be willing to learn a new language to decipher them.