After returning to Mt. Rainier, Washington from New York City, where he earned a biology degree at Columbia University, dream-folk musician, singer-songwriter Blake Cowan retreated to the wooded hills at the foot of Mt. Rainier to record a new LP, and this week’s release of a new EP, in a borrowed trailer where “he commenced a pivotal expedition into his own mortality and ephemerality” to form the musical project, Wickerbird, which is “composed of mountainside reveries rendered forth in bare guitar, cavernous harmonies, Gregorian drones and bird song.” The title track, “The Westering,” is an experimentation in acoustic, natural sounds, feedback and chants, followed by the similarly sounding track, “Hollow.”
Cowan wrote that “Indie rock is a strangely inviting umbrella term that has, at least for me, managed to become one intrinsic to, and rapturously embracing of, all things eclectic, experimental and liberating in music. The term provides a haven for the innovators and the quirky, expanding and transcending their musical mode of expression, unyoked from a need to be defined or derivative.”
“The Westering” – Wickerbird from The Westering – March 1st
“Hollow” – Wickerbird from The Westering
Listen to more Wickerbird via Spotify, including this September 2012 debut. A new message on his Facebook page says that his songs have had more than 60,000 plays on Spotify, which is completely believable.