It’s already obvious to me that Reservoir by Ah Holly Fam’ly is a contender for a top 10 position of my Best of 2009 list. And, after several listens, “All Unfolding” has quickly taken the lead as my favorite track off the album. Much of its pinnacle placement is due to the dominating presence of Jeremy Faulkner’s most unique style vocals. Here the band performs the song during a practice session in a Portland basement.

The video also depicts some elements unique to Ah Holly Fam’ly, from the plucked cello rather than a standard bass guitar, to Faulkner’s nylon-string guitar. “All Unfolding” can be found below. Visit my review of Reservoir, out October 13 on Lucky Madison Records, for an mp3 of the album’s opening track, “Young Veins”.

Ah Holly Fam’ly: All Unfolding [mp3]

On the rare occasion that you are given the honor of watching a band grow from humble and minimal beginnings to something more, it is something that must not be taken lightly. So it is with caution I approach this review of Reservoir as, buried somewhere in the midst of seemingly hundreds of boxes of albums awaiting recategorization is a slim jewel case by a band called Ah Holly Fam’ly. Xeroxed on simple paper is a cover that possesses a simple title: Ah Holly Fam’ly Sings Oh Holy Family.

Jump back a few years to rural Idaho, Moscow to be specific. And that’s where my introduction to what was then a very small band transpired. To say I ultimately forgot about Ah Holly Fam’ly would be an understatement, as they eventually vanished off my radar. But reintroduction came just about one month ago, when a copy of PDX Pop Now! 2009 landed on my desk; their “EIEIO” was a focal point of the release for me, and it was with great pleasure I heard Reservoir was soon to be on its way.

Reservoir, unlike the early incantation of Ah Holly Fam’ly, features quite a few members and plenty of production. This isn’t, after all, a DIY release. But the sensibilities that drew me to Ah Holly Fam’ly in the first place reside: the orchestrated instrumentation is Idaho-worthy, a porch-top indie folk fit for backwoods, straw hats, and farm fields, but intricate and educated. “Young Veins” opens Reservoirs on a high point, starting softly but ultimately changes time signatures and simultaneously increases in volume.

To say that this high point, so early on, is the pinnacle would be fallacious; this album is filled with pinnacles. “All Unfolding” follows “Young Veins” and its cool opening guitar riff leads smoothly into soft strings and flute, and it is here we first hear Jeremy Faulkner’s soft, raspy vocals cooing in our ear. “Army Of Light / Honeymoon” returns to the “Young Veins” style of vocals, female-fronted but with accompaniment; it too alters time for an impressive bridge. “Stranger Maker” and “Loneliest City” follow “All Unfolding” as album favorites.

Despite unique instrumentation (the combination of strings and woodwind in this particular sense is a rarity to begin with), it is Faulkner’s most unique vocal style that pinpoints the beginnings of Ah Holly Fam’ly’s greatness. But without the flutes and finger-plucked guitars, the violins and cellos, the occasionally distinct lack of percussion (“Year Of The Viking”) and vocalists compiled atop vocalists, Ah Holly Fam’ly would likely not warrant the amount of greatness I endow upon them… It is with complete honesty that I say these words: Reservoir is, without a doubt, a contender for a spot in my top 10 albums of 2009.

Ah Holly Fam’ly: Young Veins [mp3]

Lucky Madison Records [CD, 2009]

1. Young Veins
2. All Unfolding
3. Year Of The Viking
4. Rainstick
5. Army Of Light / Honeymoon
6. Stranger Maker
7. Lucky Peak
8. Loneliest City
9. Salt Of The Century
10. Gliders

Horse Feathers conjure an older definition of “gothic” in their music. It is the term as used in Southern fiction—at once horrible and beautiful. Like Flannery O’Connor’s short stories or Tennessee Williams’ plays, the songs are populated by families and lovers that are grotesque in the way that they can barely conceal their terrible pain, yet they experience moments that approach transformative grace.

Horse Feathers is composed of one man (Justin Ringle) writing, singing and playing guitar and a constellation of musical acquaintances filling out the aural space with string arrangements and traditional instrumentation. The Broderick siblings (Peter and Heather) have offered the greatest contribution to Horse Feathers’ recorded output, laying down pining cello and violin lines, vocal harmonies and folk and classical instruments such as celeste, saw, banjo and mandolin. When touring, the trio of Nathan Crockett, Catherine O’Dell and Sam Cooper are Ringle’s backing band. Their music is a co-mingling of pastoral folk with classical and avant arrangements.

The band released their debut record Words are Dead on Lucky Madison in 2006 (and reissued on vinyl in 2008) and quickly cultivated a positive reputation and a devoted following. They subsequently signed to Kill Rock Stars and released House With No Home in 2008, and have been restlessly touring in its wake. If you catch the band on their tour, perhaps you can acquire their new 7”, with the song “Road to Ruin” from the PDX Pop Now! 2008 compilation as the a-side and “Will Not Try” as its b-side. And you should see them at all costs—I have been reminded of why I like music so much each time I have watched them play, from Justin’s first time performing these songs in a friend’s living room, to witnessing them hush a noisy crowd with their whispered performance at the Sunset Tavern this past winter.

Ringle grew up in rural Idaho, an experience that compelled him to seek out and create his own ethos, and that still informs his music. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2004 and established connections with musicians there. In the arrangement of Horse Feathers’ music, one can hear the soft, graceful foliage of the hemlocks of western Oregon, and one can feel the shadow and shade provided by their near-impervious canopy. But listening to Ringle’s words, stories and his plaintive voice, and instead you hear the stolid and open lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests of his home. This part of Horse Feathers’ music is from the other Pacific Northwest—the Inland Empire, and its sound is of lonesome wind moving through the pines, of austere sunshine, cool summer nights and hard winters.

Horse Feathers’ music is wrought with reckonings, heresy and redemption. Through it, Ringle embodies the clairvoyant seer, casting judgment while shaken by what he has seen. His body seems to act as a vessel for his voice, and the intensity and tautness that he brings to his delivery is astonishing. Horse Feathers not only offer the sound of the event—the exorcism, the baptism, the fight that ends the marriage, the funeral—but of the days and years that follow, the solitude and contemplation. Theirs is a music that demands a quiet, a stillness, and concentration.

Horse Feathers: Curs In The Weeds [mp3]