I was listening to Orchard Thief’s four-track EP, simply called “Four Songs”, and my mind moved from the song “A Hole In A Wall” to a Virginia Woolf short story called “The Mark On the Wall”. The latter is a story that works as a philosophical exercise on perspective and the inaccuracy (and beauty) of human thought — speculating from afar what a spot on a wall might be. As far as the writing is concerned, the story doesn’t reach the height of Woolf’s novelistic masterpieces. But it is interesting. A character sees a mark on a wall and wonders, in a Proustian fashion, all the things it can be. Perhaps it’s s 200-year-old nail, or maybe it’s a hole? So, what does this have to do with the music? Well, nothing really, except this: Orchard Thief’s record is one where you need to let your mind wander, ruminate about possibilities while the sounds wash over you. It’s nearly all instrumental. And part of the beauty of pieces without words is that we can inject so many personal things on it. It becomes a piece of us, sometimes even more than lyrically-built tracks — because those come pre-determined and half-shaped — guiding us in a particular direction. A song like “Super Hero”, with its elegant and intertwining guitar lines, is like a daydream in miniature. I can put it on, listen, contemplate, and be seduced. That’s its allure. “A” is a slow waltz of reverb, raising softly sad moods like The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” before it. This music teaches you the beauty of just letting go. Note: “4 Songs” is meant as a companion piece to this Minnesota artists’ previous record, “Coin Purse”, and can be downloaded at a bandcamp page. I’m not sure if the band name is a nod to Susan Orleans’ book of the same name, about a man with an obsession for beautiful flowers, but I like it nonetheless. — David D. Robbins Jr.
Orchard Thief “A”
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