The music of the Wolfkings belies their name, if you equate wolves with something wild and muscular. The San Francisco-based ensemble fronted by singer-songwriter Michael Talbott makes gentle chamber-folk-pop in the confessional vein of Bright Eyes, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, et al.
Talbott’s voice is a light baritone, put to work on lyrics that are poetic and evocative. The song titles give a pretty good clue to the mood you’ll find inside: “Winter Streets,” “Gray Day,” “Autumn Ashes,” “First Rain,” and “All My Days Are So Cold” are half of the 10 tracks on this mostly somber and quite lovely record.
Talbott plays a lightly finger-picked acoustic guitar, but the songs are lovingly set like baroque jewels amid cellos, violins, bowed bass, light percussion and a whole raft of keyboards, ranging from simple pianos to various organs, harmonium, mellotron, vibes, even a few horns.
“Winter Streets” leads off with a cello introduction that evokes its subject matter, and its “la-la-la” refrain has a lightly jazzy feel, calling to mind mid-70s Kenny Rankin records. “Gray Day” includes a languid mariachi-like horn chart and multi-tracked harmony vocals that evoke early Crosby Stills and Nash. “Autumn Ashes” employs lightly plucked banjo and uke plus archaic phrasing to conjur up the feel of an old English folk song: “What has become of your fair daughters? / Do they please to see the king?” A little bit of San Francisco psychedelia shows up here and there, particularly in “First Rain” with its spare backing of guitar and harmonium.
Yes, the subjects are often typical of introspective singer-songwriter fare, but for the most part they’re presented very creatively. “I am not ashamed to cloister my pain in my pride,” Talbott sings in “Angel of Light.” “Angel of light tore out my eyes / took out my heart, un-anesthetized…” “I am the passenger,” he sings in two versions of “Passenger.” “Leaving something behind; I am the reporter, charting my own decline.”
(Antenna Farm, 2006)
