Localized Paper Bird

Let's be straight: Paper Bird's sound is all about vocal harmonies and the three women who sing them. On its new five-song EP A Sky Underground, Paper Bird thankfully doesn't attempt to fix what isn't broken. But the album's opener, "Lost Boys," and the especially heady "I Discovered" bring some new strangeness to the band's usual vocal-heavy fare. Like the sirens who enchant and steal unaware souls, Paper Bird's songstresses add a decidedly haunting, disorienting vibe to the proceedings this time around. It's not just bewildering, captivating, and totally great, but also adds the right amount of quirk to distance the band from some contemporary folk and bluegrass outfits.

A Sky Underground sheds light on some other band elements too, as banjo players and guitarists get some much-needed space for pickin' on this record. Paper Bird's gentlemen also jump in on some vocal duties, turning three-part harmonies into creepy, breathy, almost zombified six-part harmonies, which are totally unsettling in the best way possible. On "Lullaby," the horns come out to play, and they're seriously playful--leary, rough, fantastic, and playful. That said, at the end of the day, it's still about Paper Bird's vocals. When they sound this good, it's hard to even remember to pay attention to where the lyrics are going. 

The key to Paper Bird's continued greatness is in the band's willingness to get a little weird sometimes. The further out Paper Bird goes both lyrically (castles, horses, and queen's daughters show up on "Dead As A Dead Man's Bones") and musically (clustered harmonies and hilarious trumpet-trombone battles on the same song), the more interesting the results will be. The record hints at what's to come and plays out at a perfect length, meaning the EP feels like it's over way too soon. It's as good a five-song collection of left-field folk music as has likely ever played on any pair of speakers in—as they sing in the jubilant finale, "Colorado"—our motherfuckin' state.

The A.V. Club Rating: A