Maps & Atlases: Perch Patchwork

I often wake up with songs already stuck in my head.  However, this phenomenon rarely involves music I’ve been deliberately sticking into my head.  Even when I’m ribs-deep in an album I’m reviewing- and even if it’s an album by a Top 40 hook machine like Lady Gaga- I don’t really wake up hearing its tracks inside my brain.  Usually this just happens with random cheese from the ’80s and early ’90s that I haven’t heard since childhood.

But in the few weeks since I’ve started listening to Maps & Atlases’ Perch Patchwork, I’ve awoken nearly every morning with one of its tracks spinning in my mental stereo.  And I don’t mean just one of its tracks.  I mean most of the album’s songs have had at least one turn waking me up.  This album is that absurdly catchy.  Yet these melodies aren’t merely absurdly catchy.  They’re nimble and sophisticated and precise, like Eastern European acrobats.  Propelled by refreshingly unorthodox rhythms, intricate riffs, and singer Dave Davison’s tastefully poignant voice, the tunes frequently ascend toward heaven like fluttering moths before trickling back down to earth like misty rain.

Though perhaps what I love even more than the melodies is the way that Perch Patchwork feels like a journey.  Maybe not an epic journey, but a unique and very personal journey, taken by a nostalgic nomad who’s destined to wander forever while pining for a home he can never return to. (That’s the impression I get, at least.  The lyrics, while evocative, are often oblique.  As in, “I slept on/ the solid ground/ near your house/ and the frost looked like/ a castle wrapped up in tin.”)

The journey starts with a bemused yet optimistic-sounding look toward the future (”Will”), but over the course of the next few tracks, the tone gradually darkens like falling dusk.  Triumphant tribal drums are haunted by heartbreak in “The Charm;”  the danceable beat and sprightly, Phil Collins-like melodies of “Living Decorations” are afflicted by wiry, jittery guitars; on “Solid Ground,” hope is tempered by wintry angst.  Near the middle of the journey (”Is”), some minor-key acoustic guitars gallop in 7/8 time as the night wind carries the wails of lost souls, and it sounds like the foreshadowing of a long, bleak road ahead.

Instead, “Is” leads us into a sunny afternoon of meadow-frolicking- complete with zippy flutes, tropical brass and shimmering harmonies- that lasts for four and a half tracks.   Typically I have a low tolerance for such meadow-frolicking, but since the tunes continue to be so compelling and airtight, I’ve never been tempted to skip anything in this section of the record.  Then halfway through track 10 (”If This Is”), the mood drastically shifts once more, this time into something comforting yet bittersweet, like a blanket knitted by a long-lost lover.  This sentiment carries through to the title track at the very end, where Davison sings, “We can leave this place/ no one lives here anymore.”  He sounds resigned, but never defeated.  “With the race over/ we take what we can get.”   It’s a fittingly stirring ending to one of the most beautifully-crafted albums I’ve heard in years.