Blake Cowan, the Washington State native who records under the name Wickerbird, got burnt out on the big city and retreated to his home across the country, where he holed up in a trailer at the foot of Mt. Rainier. If that origin story sounds like a tale told for Emma forever ago, the comparison doesn’t quite stop there.
With his sparse instrumentation and swells of multi-tracked vocals, Cowan does resemble Bon Iver circa 2007, but where Justin Vernon came direct, Cowan is far more interested in obfuscation. In “Riverborn,” which we’re proud to premiere today, Cowan buries himself in reverb and surrounds himself with birdsong recorded in the woods outside of his trailer. Despite the song’s austerity—there’s little more than voice, guitar, and bird on this song—the quadrupling of Cowan’s vocal actually obscures what he’s saying. So while the music scans as confessional, listening to “Riverborn” is ultimately like watching a foreign film with no subtitles—deeply moving, but without your fully understanding why.
The Leaf Maker track list
“Prologue, or the Maker of Leaves”
“Bugbear”
“Riverborn”
“The Coppice / A Haunting”
“Sail Cloth”
“Vulpes vulpes”
“Danielle is the Pines”
“Llewellyn”
“Woodshed”
“Sepulchre”
“The Candle Jar”
“The Leaf Maker”
