If you were to think of the best folk acts putting out albums (or at least the most talked about) in the last couple of years, most would come up with a few names: Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart. Add to that list Horse Feathers, ushered into inclusion by their new album House With No Home.
From the first track, “Curs in the Weeds,” you know you are listening to something special. A simple guitar strum evolves into a full experience when lead singer Justin Ringle brings in his mysterious vocals. They swirl and float around his simple chords like the smoke escaping a giant cigar. Brother-and-sister duo Heather and Peter Broderick build up the songs with their beautiful string arrangements.
But it is Ringle’s voice that is the most powerful instrument here. It evokes emotion with such presence while touching on themes from the past.
The Vanguard got Ringle on the phone recently and asked him some questions about the new album and its content:
Alex Huebsch: I’m interested to know where the name of the album comes from, because it’s definitely a very deep folk sentiment, House With No Home. I also find it interesting the juxtaposition of the name of the album and the first people you thank in your liner notes are your families.
Justin Ringle: Well it’s–House With No Home–it’s a lyric from the first song [“Curs in the Weeds”]. Something I came up with. It’s domestic stuff, about being uncomfortable and not at ease. I hadn’t felt very comfortable in my own house. This album’s drawn from personal experience–content of songs and lyrically–but not quite as autobiographical as last record [Words Are Dead, 2006]. Most of those songs were really literal in life, drawing on different experiences. This is a bit more fictional, not so literally attached.
AH: You speak a few times about a curse? What does this recurring curse mean?
JR: I don’t know–it’s interesting, it automatically is kind of mysterious in a way, or supernatural. You can talk about curses really lightly. Where everyone can relate, you can’t shake something. I used it a lot–not in the exact sense–you can’t get over something. Probably a lot of it is subconscious.
AH: And for all the family mentioned, no mother, correct me if I’m wrong, is ever mentioned.
JR: Not in this record. That’s true. In the last record a lot more. Most of the major characters are father and son roles. There’s a track on the last album that’s specifically mother [“Mother’s Sick”].
AH: How do the larger arrangements lend themselves to you on this album?
JR: Musically, it’s a step up from the last record. More textured. More thoroughly arranged. They were the songs I was writing and Peter and Heather came up with arrangements.
AH: You recorded the new record in the summer and finished in the winter. Did this change of seasons have any affect on how the arrangements sounded?
JR: Not really. I don’t think so. The songs we recorded in summer were songs we’ve been playing for a while. Not summer songs already. Season was not really part of the process. Always affected by it. Not this time.
AH: You mention Oregon also–I know you are from Idaho–how much do you think Idaho or Oregon and their landscapes/people/surroundings, for that matter, influence your songwriting?
JR: I grew up in Idaho and lived there the longest. There was no culture there and you were left to your own devices. All the people I know in Idaho had to be musical anthropologists and put lots of effort into it if they wanted to watch a concert. You had to drive six hours to Portland. It’s so easy to experience culture here growing up and being removed from it. Idaho is more about space and openness–different environment. Here there’s no sunlight for seven months so you’re forced to become an introvert.