Woodpigeon — Die Stadt Muzikanten

I wasn't able to wrap my head around Woodpigeon's second album, Treasury Library Canada, and I think I'm finally starting to understand why.

Their previous disc, Songbook played like a greatest-hits album masquerading as a debut and had me thinking the Calgary-based collective were a very different sort of band than they actually are. Die Stadt Muzikanten cements frontman Mark Hamilton's vision.

Don't bother approaching this album in the hopes you'll find one or two songs that you really love. Woodpigeon are more interested in the big picture than its fragments. Die Stadt Muzikanten is grandiosity on the scale of The Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love, though Woodpigeon don't appear to be telling a single tale.

The most obvious complaint that'll be lodged against this disc is it's troublingly long. Two of its 16 songs (one is a hidden track) push past the seven-minute mark and nearly every track involves a grand flourish of orchestration at the end. It's a little overwhelming, sure, but too much of a good thing is a very minor complaint.

Die Stadt Muzikanten is a gold mine for lovers of somber, orchestral pop. It may be the best aural representation of homesickness and longing since Mojave 3's Excuses For Travelers.

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