The first thing that Mark Paulson did when I saw him following the Bowerbirds’ set at CMJ was to pinch the insignia on his right shirt pocket and show off the University of Iowa Herky. He’d found the used piece of clothing at a thrift store in New York City earlier that day and knew that it would be appreciated. It’s not the reason that the band – two-thirds of which attended Iowa at the same time I did – finds itself so loftily elevated in our year-end list. It has nothing to do with state pride or Midwestern gentlemanliness. It’s travesty that Hymns For A Dark Horse didn’t merit the kind of hoopla that it deserved this year and it makes one question what in the Sam Hell people are looking for in an album. Haven’t those people ever wondered what it was like to be a wooden floor – thick and full of potential splinters, waiting demurely beneath shoes and soles, a product of former grandeur that used to feel its feet thrown into the cold and damp earth and its outstretched branches pulling and flinging up into the dizzying heights? Haven’t they ever sat in an empty house and considered the creaking and cracking of the wooden sides and floors as their own bones spelling something, a rhythmic code, a riddle only for them? Well, that’s a shame. We’re not going to wait for them to catch up. We’re out here on the drafts, creaking away and walking barefoot on a soft bed of pine needles with these Birds, everything else is blocked out into dribbling silence.

What we said about the record previously in the year:
“You should be able to smell the Internet in the air no matter where you are, you should be able to taste that sadness. Will Oldham’s character in this year’s Old Joy talks about how hard it is to find real quiet these days. It’s a thought that’s absolutely occurred to Phil Moore, Beth Tacular and Mark Paulson of the North Carolina band The Bowerbirds. It’s a thought that’s been rung through their soft ears like a hard rain for years now and they’ve slinked away from the noise, the stupid cacophony that the rest of us – like it or not – consider to be something of a modern miracle. It’s a strange place to find much happiness in – convenience, yes, but happiness, no. The Bowerbirds released an album this year that is stunning in its ability to set a stage out among the silent panoply of burr oaks, coral reefs, sun beams breaking rules and refracting at odd angles and invaluable peacefulness that just in passing sound waves could make a person feel as restful as if they’d just slept for days. They stray from all of that rowdy amplification if they can possibly help it and they light out into the core aspects of fundamental joy, pain and appreciation of taking in air and letting it out constantly, effortlessly and over time. Moore would be the first person to call in the middle of the night to soothe an infant having a bit of a night terror or just to quell them of the darkness. Tacular and Paulson could help him start and then as the tiny eyelids began to get sandy and fall like pink projector screens, they could sneak out of the room and Moore could finish off the job, providing the warm milk in the form of “Hooves” – singing about kindling that still burns within his heart.”

The Bowerbirds Daytrotter Session