Folkies took themselves far too seriously just a generation ago, and the entire genre suffered for it. Gone is the pretentiousness of that era in the new album Whispers in the Wind by Lindley Creek, and in its place, we find a zeal for big strings and captivating lyrical themes that has the potential to excite the underground all summer long. There’s not a lot of ego to come between artists and audience in tracks like “I’m Still Here” and “We All Need Grace;” this is, after all, a band more interested in the music than the materialisms their peers care for, and that makes this quite the interesting release indeed.
There’s not a spot of blushing in the hooks we hear in “Breathe,” “Over and Over” and “Every Time a Train Goes By,” but instead a muscularity to the musicianship that never sounds over-rehearsed or forced from the band. On the contrary, there’s so much lust for the climax of all three of these songs that one has to wonder just how powerful they would sound as a medley in a live performance. Lindley Creek seems like a group that might feel caged when they’re not on the stage, but they do their best to bring the concert energy to these tracks.
Any need for synthetics is eliminated early on in songs like “That Page Won’t Turn” and “Spring is in the Air Again,” and were they present in the mix over the organic harmonies that drive these tracks home, I don’t know that Whispers in the Wind would sound like the winning affair it does in this instance. To me, Lindley Creek is a band that can’t exist in the watered-down mainstream – they’ve got to be blazing their own path with loud, proud instrumental prowess, and that’s what makes this record such a unique listen next to its counterparts in folk right now.
The straightforward attack used in “Empty,” “Satisfied Mind,” and “If this Road Could Talk” really counts for something in Whispers in the Wind, comparable to what the lyrics are lending every stitch of music in the foreground. The presence that the instruments have next to the vocal is always balanced, but Lindley Creek doesn’t mind turning up the heat on a string part if it has the potential to make a bigger statement than words ever could. Give and take is a part of making a band work, and this group has it down to a science here.
I was expecting to be wowed by Whispers in the Wind just because of the love that Lindley Creek has been getting from the indie press lately, but I didn’t expect to find the full-court expressiveness of this material to be as accessible and thoughtful as it is in this incarnation. Only a few other folk bands are trying to make the same kind of engaging music that this crew is so handily in Whispers in the Wind, but of those that have captured my interest in 2023, none have had the charisma of these players.
Troy Johnstone