Michael Feuerstack finds himself today in a small but moving canon of musician-lyricists that prioritize, in equal amounts, their words and their melodies. The view of song as indivisible from lyric is a venerable philosophy. It traces its routes back to the earliest days of American folk, embodied most notably by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and, of course, Leonard Cohen. In keeping this understanding of the music of language, Feuerstack rubs shoulders with some notable contemporaries that have kept the proverbial songwriter’s torch burning. His music shares a kindred spirit with the work of fellow Canadians Steve Lambke, Bry Webb, Jennifer Castle and The Weather Station, to name a few, creating songs that speak with great intimacy and candour.
Natural Weather moves in lingering, enunciated cadences, parsing sweetly vibed-out slides on the guitar with humble, pointillist lyrics that break in a staccato resonance. It crackles with an observational humility that echoes in the quiet and pensive chambers that Feuerstack and company open up.
The instrumentation is exactly as it should be for an artist drawn to subtlety and nuance—quiet and assured, breaking forward at times with an electric brilliance. The guitar work ebbs and flows through acoustic pickings, inflections of country twang and spectral ambience while being complimented always by steady drums and occasional violin flourishes in guest appearances by Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld.
Feuerstack relies on humble meditations and quiet phrasings, emphasizing his words with consideration and poise. It is an approach that mingles the poetic and the mundane, revealing that they are ultimately not so dissimilar.
This is Feuerstack’s milieu, navigating the line between the corny and the uncanny, yawing at times in either direction but never belying his sensitivity to the great ordinary.
Natural Weather is a competent, moving and tender record that feels always perfectly at home within in its own time and space. It shines forth like a coy secret, something whispered in the ear with unremarkable brilliance.