OTA Review: Dana Falconberry – Though I Didn’t Call It Came

Dana Falconberry’s new ep Though I Didn’t Call It Came is pleasant and pretty, a lovely four track sampler of things to come from the Austin, TX based singer-songwriter. But to call the album just pretty and pleasant would be to sell it short, because this is a delicately crafted and ornately arranged set of songs that will grab your heart through your ear and make you feel things.

The EP opens with “Petoskey Stone” (the state stone of Michigan, a fossilized bit of corral whose hexagonal pattern design can only be seen while the stone is either wet or polished. Google pictures of them, they are nice to look at), which acts as the foundational piece of the collection. The track begins with the building up of instruments – harp, guitar, stick clicks and hand claps, which slowly crystallize into a beautiful wall of song whose simultaneous delicateness and fullness envelop the listener, and as woodwinds and ethereal harmonies jump into (probably not jump, more like hop lightly onto) the mix, you’re already sucked in. And by the time you think you’re ready to start singing along and bobbing your head more than gently, the song fades away, like a dry, unremarkable Petoskey Stone washed away by the tides of Lake Michigan back into its depths before slowly washing back on to shore where you, the listener, find the patterned little beauty and put it in your pocket to carry with you throughout the rest of the EP.

The other tracks on Though I Didn’t Call it Came are equally light and delicate, ornate and simple. While Falconberry sings about the comforting aspects of nature, the companionship found in the stars and the birds in the trees, you can’t help but agree with her. So natural are her arrangements, her harmonies, her instrumentation. And this is what’s really so great about her music. Not that you hear Dana sing about nature’s comforts and think to yourself Oh! She’s right, she is, but that the music itself makes you feel what she’s saying. It all seems so natural, so unforced and unprompted. It’s hard to tell whether the tracks are arranged and produced with respect to the lyrics, or whether the lyrics reflect the harmoniousness of the arrangements. And in all likelihood, it’s neither. The music and the songwriting seem intertwined in a way that is so organic and connected from the ground up that to simply call the EP ‘pleasant and pretty’ is to commit a grave offense against Though I Didn’t Call It Came, whose pleasantness and prettiness isn’t just aesthetic beauty, but the result of a meticulously crafted and beautifully performed batch of songs. As the title reflects, this is the type of music that grabs you by the guts and takes over all your insides without you ever having asked it to. It is comforting and wonderful, and it feels so damn good.

Listen to Though I Didn’t Call It Came, available 1/24 from our friends over at Crossbill Records out of Sacramento, and check out the music video for “Petoskey Stone” below.

Petoskey Stone Video from dana falconberry on Vimeo.