featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
January 7, 2025
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Perfection is overrated. Given the choice between polish and passion we'll gladly choose the latter, a quality flowing freely on the fourth LP from Olympia's Pigeon Pit. Frontwoman Lomes Oleander barks, gasps and emotes her songs, lyrics that passionate invoke friends and settings, bare sustenance and abandon. Crazy Arms (Ernest Jenning, Jan 17) is a breathless punk-folk howl.
Though sessions were recorded live to four-track in a friend's basement, the new songs reveal a definite growth in the six-piece band's approach, as well as a deeper nod to Pigeon Pit's country accents. Bo Lark's fiddle, Mads Bun's banjo, and Jim Rhian's pedal steel are near constants. Like Wednesday or or Ratboys, these flirtations will never land them on mainstream country radio, but it did bring Pigeon Pit to our doorstep ...
Listeners already familiar with the band will recognize Oleander's frantically strummed acoustic guitar and her impassioned scattershot delivery on "Bad Advice", like a lost track from Violent Femmes' early work. Rhian adds a folky harmonica solo, while the singer delivers an accounting of times she's been misled: you said 'just listen to your heart' / and so i listened to my heart sing / it sang 'all the people that you know / they know that you're not one of them / all the people that you love / just love a person you pretend. At an economical two minutes, "Dear Johnny" flies by in a blur, while the run-on emotions of "Tide Pools" are barely lengthier. The solo acoustic number is not as hell-bent, though it does showcase Lomes Oleander's remarkable ability to shoehorn more lyrics into two minutes that most.
Most notably, songs like "Tide Pools" serve to remind listeners of the real care and detail with which Oleander builds her lyrics: you might be my silver key that i lost in arizona / or maybe you're my catalytic converter & maybe i'm out 1500 dollars / but the darkness beneath that blanket i will find a place to hide, a shelter from the world like a pool built by the tide. With a youthful romantic streak and a bohemian, beat-like spirit, the nuance of her poetry is unexpected given Oleander's often rapid-fire delivery. On "Hot Shower Winter Morning": windows down, let in that sticky summer new york city air / a quarter tank, a couple drinks, could get us anywhere.
A number of songs on Crazy Arms do slow the pace somewhat, encouraging Pigeon Pit's musicianship and lyrics to breathe. "Stone Song" is an acoustic fingerpicked ramble, with some sweet pedal steel and a rare piano solo: flying's just facing whatever you're falling to, Oleander sings. "Josephine County Blues" leans hardest into the outfit's country identity in introducing the lost residents in the Southern Oregon hills: everyone out here's looking for something / sheriff knows if he comes around they'll be dragging the rogue river friday morning / I guess some buried treasure just ain't meant to be found.
Especially in light of the relative success of similar country-adjacent acts from the indie-sphere, this could trigger a breakout for Lomes Oleander and her supporting cast. As they continue to find their footing with wider audiences, there is genuine charm and even beauty in the clatter and chaos of Pigeon Pit, a sensitivity underlying the racket. "Bronco" evokes MJ Lenderman with its ready guitar hook and more standard song structure: pin my wrists against the sunrise / feel the bottle between my bare thighs, sliding / like a bronco, i was made to ride your highs & lows. Oleander is like a poet guide to our messed up world, and a voice for the young people who are inheriting it.
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