Ah Holly Fam’ly Thursday, Oct. 15-- Local Cut

Ah Holly Fam’ly Thursday, Oct. 15

October 14th, 2009 [6:05AM] Posted by: Michael Mannheimer | 0 COMMENTS

A Portland folk-pop juggernaut comes together like Voltron and makes some very pretty music in the process.

[STRING THEORY] Jeremy Faulkner is fascinated by guitars. That might not come as much of a surprise—guitars are what guitar-playing frontmen are usually obsessed with—until you hear Ah Holly Fam’ly’s layered, intricate arrangements. The group makes a point of emphasizing everything but the guitar.

“Until I was in my early 20s, guitar was the only instrument I cared about,” 28-year-old Faulkner says. “I listened to music and if there was a string arrangement or something I didn’t really hear it.”

Faulkner has clearly come a long way since his younger days. The first thing one hears on Ah Holly Fam’ly’s debut full-length, Reservoir, is the sound of a violin and flute softly overtaking a gently strummed acoustic guitar, and it only gets less guitar-centric from there. The band’s sound—a mix of Appalachian folk, backwoods innocence, Leonard Cohen-esque poetry and gorgeous male-female harmonies—make the most of the band’s unconventional eight-piece lineup: Ah Holly Fam’ly is a chamber-pop juggernaut.

“We just kept on adding members,” says singer and flutist Becky Dawson of the band’s transition from its roots as a trio to its current behemoth status. “Before we knew it, it was like, ‘Why not bring in another friend?’”

Reservoir’s finest moments, including the delicate opener “Young Veins”—which begins in a séance of plucked string instruments before changing time signatures and morphing into a jaunty pop song—and the stunning vocal interplay of “Loneliest City,” showcase the work of an incredibly tight octet, one that built slowly from a trio after moving to Portland from Moscow, Idaho, in June 2006.

Though Moscow isn’t a huge hub for touring bands, it was a college town, and Faulkner fondly recalls both Animal Collective and Devendra Banhart playing shows in the basement of the grungy house he lived in at the time. It was those experiences, along with both his and Dawson’s separate stints as music directors at college station KUOI, that persuaded the duo to pursue music full-time.

As the band—which is pared down to a four-piece for out-of-town trips—prepares to head out on its first cross-country tour, Faulkner is quick to point out that he’s totally serious about that sentiment. After returning from the East Coast, he and Dawson plan to move to a cabin in rural New Mexico for a few months to work on new material that focuses on vocals and, you guessed it, the guitar. “Songwriting is the only thing I can do,” he says. “I get sick of everything else real fast.”

SEE IT: Ah Holly Fam’ly plays Holocene on Thursday, Oct. 15, with A Weather and Aan. 8:30 pm. $6. 21+.

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