Winter Songs
Matt Pond PA
Published by Under The Radar
Winter
Songs
Matt Pond PA
Published by Under The Radar
Making
an album is a tall order. Thankfully somebody came up with the EP. If you’re
low on funds, short on material—or in this case, sitting on a set of songs
carrying such non-matching luggage as Death Cab For Cutie, George Winston and
Clark W. Griswold—the medium-player might just be for you. The seven-track
Winter Songs is probably not the best way to get to know this proudly
sensitive Brooklyn quintet, combining as it does three originals (two of them
short, seasonally titled instrumentals) with four covers. Pond’s own “Snow
Day” strengthens the case for simple song craft, a delicate yet punchy
acoustic-electric chimer with double-tracked vocals and cello runs. Neil Young’s
“Winterlong” strums on the clean side of alt-country, while Lindsay
Buckingham’s Vacation theme “Holiday Road” goes through
the boogie reduction machine and comes out sparkling with organ, pedal steel
and a crisp gale where the rhythm section used to be. But the crowning cover
is Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea,” an
already beautiful ballad that here lives a secret life of Daniel Lanois-style
delay and soft focus. Winter in the way sunshine fills an icicle, these songs
are well aware of their warmth.