Thus Owls
Album: Black Matter(EP)
Label: Secret City Records
Tracks: 6
Website: http://www.thusowls.com

Thus Owls is a Montreal-based Swedish-Canadian experimental-indie-rock band built around husband-and-wife duo Erika and Simon Angell. The current lineup, completed by bassist Morgan Moore, keyboard player Parker Shper and drummer Stefan Schneider, was consolidated around the time of the release of the band's third album Turning Rocks, which came out last year. However, the band's sound is much more interesting than the basic "experimental indie-rock" label might imply, and explores with a disarming sense of expansion within a comparatively brief timescale a surprisingly detailed soundscape in which the creative interaction of individual elements proves as important as the empowerment expressed within the actual songwriting.

Often, unexpected concrete rhythms will invariably generate a song's pulse, and this is illustrated on the single taken from the EP, Turn Up The Volumes, for which the aural catalyst is a "swinging" cymbal motif conjured by guest drummer Liam O'Neill (Suuns). The choking claustrophobia of dramatic opening song Asleep In The Water also involves a swirling string arrangement by Daniel Bjarnason (Sigur Rós, Efterklang). A cyclical keyboard figure ushers in the shortest track, the instrumental Vector, its unhurried progression belies its note-values in contrast to the limpid chords swimming above in a more leisurely fashion, finally disintegrating in a whirlpool.

The ethereal distortions and insistent clattering rhythms of the EP's title track are mirrored in the brooding introduction to its finale We Leave/We Forget, whose swooning, shifting perspective is both immersive and haunting.

David Kidman