New Feet

On the latest album from Madison singer-songwriter Mike Behrends, New Feet, the young folkie seems content with working within his own limitations. Behrends’ gruff delivery rarely steps out of a comfortable vocal range and his melancholy lyrics display a deep affinity for restraint and rhyming.

New Feet works best when Behrends loosens up a bit, whether he’s channeling the Avett Brothers in the warm shuffle of album opener “Church Songs” or crouching into a haunting waltz for the slide-guitar swelling of “Enough About Me.” On the latter, Behrends’ defeatist lyrics soak into the crawling backdrop with ease: “I’ll pretend I’ve read books and dated girls for their looks / Even kissed one once when I loved another one.” The standout track is “Dead Men Don’t,” a bit of charged Americana that finds Behrends crooning about a deceased brother who was accidentally buried with a ring he’d intended to propose with.

Behrends’ latest work is sparse, clean, and refined, highlighting his soft voice and strong storytelling. But his chosen genre is often at its best when these conventions are thrown to the wind and blasted into oblivion by out-of-key howls and raw lyrics that seem to wander endlessly, or perfected with soaring harmonies and walls of orchestration—all of which would require the songwriter to stomp out his complacency.