Nature still breathes

Bands toss out EPs between albums for various reasons: to stay in the spotlight with a brand new song, usually paired with some poorly-recorded, studio-enhanced live tracks; a tantalizing prelude of the next platter; fragmented, discarded leftovers to placate the rabid completists, of which I'm stupidly proud to count myself as a member for many acts. With Portland, Oregon folk-metallers Agalloch, it's none of the above, certainly not with their 'brand new' EP, The White. Sort of a companion piece to 2004's The Grey and its noisecape reworkings of tracks off their beyond brilliant 2002 album, The Mantle, the band has released seven mellow, melancholy, (mostly) instrumental tracks recorded in the last few years that wouldn't have sounded out of place on said long player, fit comfortably within their oeuvre and rank among their finest compositions.

Opening with a clip from The Wicker Man, a movie making additional appearances in the final two tracks as well, The Isle of Summer begins proceedings with a haunting acoustic guitar that recalls nothing but verdant leaves fluttering like ribbons in a warm, lilting August breeze, with a short, single fuzzed-out electric enhancing this late exhalation of the season. Twilight begins to arrive with Birch Black, along with a rippling electric/acoustic mix and percussion buried underneath. A sad, gentle, nearly wordless solitary voice echoes in the soundscape of Hollow Stone, a vague hymn to the panorama before us. The murmurs of the flora and fauna and a crisp, rock-strewn stream calls forth the world of the Pantheist, the EPs physical and thematic centerpiece, intertwining lines of guitar, both metallic and unplugged, a veil of drums, the notes wandering as a body and mind purposely lost in the wonders of creation, soon joined, for a moment, by a defiantly sad voice. Now, the rays of dawn, and the uptempo, accordion-accented neo-folk of Birch White, layered below the verse of English poet A. S. J. Tessimond:

The birch tree in winter
Leaning over the secret pool
Is Narcissus in love
With the slight white branches,
The slim trunk,
In the dark glass;
But,
Spring coming on,
Is afraid,
And scarfs the white limbs
In green.

The call of birds, swathed in that green, are the final notes heard before the plaintive guitar and piano of Sowilo Rune, whose whispered vocals and swirling synths conjure up the world of the ethereal, of the magical, all brought back home to the oncoming change with the piano of Summerisle - Reprise, whose notes are that inexplicable alchemy of the happy and the sad, of life and death, the ouroboros of existence that we're all fated to endure.

Sure, these guys take years between churning out full-lengths, but the wait is always worth it. And unsurprisingly, given the craftsmanship of the band, the same goes for 'stopgap' releases like The White, a wonderful collection of songs that explore yet one more shade of the band's deep-rooted interest in the stormy, yet fragile natural world that surrounds us. A request: don't take another four years until the next album, gents. Three will be just fine.