Erin McKeown 'We Will Become Like Birds' album

One of 2005's most resplendent releases has arrived: We Will Become Like Birds is a striking testament to the power of personal transcendence. It is widely known that Erin McKeown, a musicianB's musician, will deftly hop from part to part on every record and on stage.

So yes, Erin has played every single guitar on We Will Become Like Birds, as well as some bass and keyboards and every single part she plays glitters with her remarkable touch.

Virginia-born and living in Massachusetts, Erin possesses the intimate earthiness of Wilco, the pop sensibility of Rilo Kiley, and the genre-free boundlessness of every great American artist in the canon. We Will Become Like Birds is the follow-up to 2003B's critically acclaimed Nettwerk debut, Grand. While Grand boasted exquisite character-driven songs and quirky takes on the more off-beat side of life, We Will Become Like Birds walks away from the overtly theatrical approach and keeps Erin's evolution as an artist moving forward. "Luckily, events in my personal life conspired to help me. For about a year, the only thing I could write about was myself whether I wanted to or not," she says.

According to Erin, We Will Become Like Birds is less a title for the album and more a proposition for living. "I wanted to put forward the idea that you cannot change your struggles but you can be changed by them and that that can be extraordinarily freeing. Accepting change is the hardest part, but ultimately you are better off for taking that leap into the air, and I think the songs reflect that."

Even though Erin played most of the instruments herself, she still got inspiration from some very talented friends. Producer and engineer Tucker Martine (Modest Mouse), singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey, drummer Matt Chamberlain (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, David Bowie), and bassist Sebastian Steinberg (Beth Orton, Soul Coughing) formed a band in the studio with Erin to give the songs a live and instinctive feel. Ethereal chanteuse and friend Juana Molina flew up from Argentina to record with Erin for three days. She contributed a panoply of unique sounds to the songs "Air" and "We Are More," and provided an inimitable vocal turn as Erin's comic partner on the faux-french "The Golden Dream."

The album's opening track, "Aspera," is a grounded hymn over surging drum and bass-meets-guitar groove recorded live in one take. To the Stars bursts with blissful optimistic energy like every great post-break-up song should. At the center of the album is "Float," the most intimate and vulnerable song Erin has ever recorded. Part wonder, part despair, the track crescendos with a cry of "Hallelujah." Is it for mercy or in adoration? Later, as if to answer, Erin lets her guitar fly on the throbbing "Bells and Bombs," carving out a brash swath of fearlessness. The rising melodies and soaring guitar of the album's closing track, "You Were Right About Everything," feel like an exhalation a hard-fought victory and the arrival of a breakthrough for an ambitious young artist.

Biography

What do you do after you’ve made three critically-acclaimed albums that explore nearly every genre of popular music? What do you do after you’ve learned how to play all the instruments yourself? If you’re Erin McKeown, you make We Will Become Like Birds, the 27-year-old’s fourth studio album. It’s a work of simple and elegant beauty so original that no one but Erin McKeown could be responsible.

"I had driven myself crazy with possibilities over the last three records I had made," says McKeown, referring to 1999's Monday Morning Cold, 2000's Distillation, and 2003's Grand. "I love music so much, and it is so much a part of who I am, that the temptation to do everything has always gotten the better of me. With this project, I deliberately set out to narrow my focus. What would happen if I concentrated on one thing for a whole album? What would happen if I could get my mind to stand very still for 12 songs?" she says with a laugh, only hinting at how difficult that proposition might be.

Settled into her home studio, McKeown took to her four-track and composed bass, drum, guitar and keyboard parts for all her new songs, mapping out the emotional parameters of separation and strength, intense sadness and raw possibility.

Demos in hand, McKeown set out to find a partner for the project. She found her perfect foil in Tucker Martine — a producer, engineer and composer who has worked previously with Jim White, Modest Mouse, Bill Frisell and Laura Veirs, in addition to his own very large catalogue of original music. "What I love about Tucker is his energy. You literally touch him and he is electric, brimming with enthusiasm and creativity," explains Erin of her experience co-producing the album with Martine.

McKeown next decided that there was only one place to make this record: New Orleans. "Last year was my first time visiting the city,” she explains, “and I was lucky enough to be shown around by a good friend who lives there. It felt like a gift, to get to know this incredible place. New Orleans has the unique quality of being both a hugely sad and an ultimately joyful place. That's how I saw it anyway, and that’s how I saw my album as well."

With the ability to play all of the instruments between the two of them, McKeown and Martine might have entered the studio and created the entire album themselves. However, it was decided from the onset that these songs would benefit most from inspired performances by a real band. Giving generously of themselves, studio heavyweights Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, David Bowie), Sebastian Steinberg (Beth Orton, Soul Coughing), and Steve Moore (Laura Veirs) — drums, bass and keyboards, respectively — joined McKeown and Martine for a week-long session at Piety Street Recording, a former mental institution and post office in the city's historic Bywater neighborhood. "I gave the guys the demos, then stepped back and let them do what they do best. I just became the guitar player," recalls Erin. Basic tracks were recorded live to tape, a process new to McKeown. "I'd always worked on the computer and didn't much care for the analog vs. digital debate, but here it made the most sense to keep us intuitive and instinctive."

Building on a quick start, McKeown and Martine finished off the songs in the next two weeks, inviting two more collaborators — Argentine electronic artist Juana Molina and American singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey. "I've known Peter forever, and his voice slays me every time," says McKeown of Mulvey's tender baritone on "Delicate December." Juana Molina was a newer find. "I met her recently at a show in Seattle and fell completely in love."

An acclaimed live performer, Erin McKeown has toured with Josh Ritter, Teitur, Ani DiFranco, Norah Jones, and many others. She plans on spending most of 2005 on stages across the country.

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Erin McKeown - We Will Become Like Birds