Recording artist: We Are The Willows
Release: A Collection of Sounds and Something Like the Plague (LP)
Notable tracks: “A Funeral Dressed as a Birthday,” “The Sorry Psalter” and “Yellow Dress”
Money quote: “I fell in love with another man’s wife and I think I am sorry”

At first he comes off as a simple guy. Until recently he was a preschool teacher. He writes songs about drinking beer and trying to solve the big questions. Pictures of his infant niece appear frequently on his blog. He drops expressions like “oh fer cute,” and, whether the intention is ironic or sincere, he might even throw in a “ya” for good measure.

A preliminary listen of Peter Miller’s project We Are The Willows prolongs this. Tracks are quiet, move slowly, and build very little, often arranged around the sparse plinka plink plinka of folk guitar, ukulele, and what is pretty clearly a banjo. Field recordings include the chirping of birds and street noise. His voice sounds breakable but never breaks, and for this, even the most tone-deaf of us all will want to shout along with him. So it is the thesis of this review that the project and the bandleader who fronts it are far from simple.

A short bio first:

At the age of 24, Miller has spent the majority of the last six years immersed in the Minneapolis music scene, actively recording and performing in bands throughout his college years…. We Are The Willows is one of two current projects; Miller also lends his songwriting, guitar playing and vocals to well accomplished Minneapolis-based indie rock band, Red Fox Grey Fox. We Are The Willows started as a side project – a place to write songs outside of the structure of a full-band, but has slowly become a main focus for the singer/songwriter.

In 2007, We Are The Willows released its first EP, titled Bravery. Bravery set the groundwork for We Are The Willows’ folk-pop sound, consisting mostly of Miller’s signature countertenor voice singing over simple finger-plucked guitar melodies. A Collection Of Sounds And Something Like The Plague features this sound, though Miller seems to intentionally bury it beneath his pile of organized noises.

Buried?  Maybe. But not really. No.  Not at all.

The album’s first act recalls a lo-fi Sigur Ros, and yes that is intended as the soaring complement it appears to be. The opening track (“A Collection of Sounds”) is both clinical and lazy, with the Big Sky choral reachings of those Icelandic übers, or — perhaps — Efterklang. The large-as-horizon motif carries through the second track “A Funeral Dressed as a Birthday”, which unpacks a breezy pastel feel and a familiar, soul-rending narrative about loss, grief, and recovery. A sample lyric — delivered both in whispers and screams, very fitting — is: “I just don’t know where people go when they die. But I know that I will cry when you die somewhere.”

“The Sorry Psalter” is an uptempo, upbeat, finger snapper of a track, with self-effacing lyrics that start with, “I, in my own head, am a bookshelf of a brain with books I never read.” The cheerful-dour mismatch between voice and prose is a clever twist, and one that plays as surprisingly up-to-the-minute on an otherwise timeless album.  “Yellow Dress” closes out the overlong first act and is the strongest work on the album, a clever lament with beautiful found-sound percussion.  “Knots and Nots That Are Tied and Tangled” adds Brian Setzer guitar to all the nylon string work. And therein lies the album’s primary flaw: the ear longs for the electric and large pieces like “Yellow Dress” during the slower, rather morose ones such as “This Is How the West Was Won.”  (Especially in these two cases, as those two cuts run one after the other.)  The pace mostly recovers with “The Windows,” which inhabits that intersection of alt-country and straight-up indie.  More on that, “Trees in the Park” plays a bit too twangy, a lemonade stand in Amarillo that is running low on sugar.

Startling?  Yes.  Quirky?  Throughout.  Altogether groundbreaking?  No.  Inconsistent wizardry?  Yes.  Aficionados might bristle at the use of I-word, but note that Arcade Fire’s debut LP might stand as album of the decade, and the quality of those ten tracks is infamously variable.  Indeed, We Are The Willows might learn something about track placement from that Canadian outfit: simply scattering the last four downtempo songs among the first six kinetic ones would have improved them.  The album would be renamed A Collection of Sounds and Yellow Dress, but really, is that title any less a non sequitur?  Even so, there are moments of near-perfection on this odd, moving release.  Not only does Miller lend us his poet’s ear, but his eye as well. So his sight should be your sight. And who knows? Maybe it already is. Go and see for yourself.