Watching For Foxes - Undone Bird

Watching For Foxes

I never get over to Grand Rapids as much as I should...  And it's rare that our Detroit ears stretch over that far to check in on the local scene's latest releases. Watching For Foxes are quite distinct from other west-side-Mitten bands like Heaters, Greensky Bluegrass or The Go Rounds. There's this alluring fury to some of their folk-rock songs, this striding blaze and sharp churned stride, the guitars pealing with this elemental clangor, and the vocals intonated with this ineffable urgency, an arpeggio of all the heart's strings, while the drums and bass, the pianos and atmospheric pedals, effectively pull the listener in, pushes you forward...

Watching For Foxes make every song feel like it's that half-triumphant, half-weary, all-around cathartic march up the hilly knoll towards the unknowable-yet-still-hope-splashed horizon, as if every song were the build up to the closing credits of the indie-arthouse film of the story to your life. And Undone Bird is very much an aural anthology of soundtracks to a life, a life dented and sweetened by moments of soul-searching, of sacrifice and loss, of refreshed perspectives and outlook-altering questions...of, above all, resoluteness. The music, like the motives and moxie of the band, churns on, onward... 

I also enjoy the ambient wooziness, the half-in-a-dream stagger, of some of the more atmospheric sounds captured on this production. I love how succinct and profound the percussive elements can be, providing just the right amount of propulsion. I love how the lead vocals and the guitars can be so uniquely expressive, and yet sound as though they were both comparable lost souls propping each other up in arms in this undeterred forging forth. 

Blues and rootsy country vibes meet space-orbiting avant-garde shreds; heart-on-the-sleeve folk with the American Underground, nostalgic troubador ballads for the quiet twilight wanders and cinematic glides into the mind-blowing wide open empyrean. Be ready to have it pared back for some minimal banjo odes, or some slower-building tempos under some star lyrical fair. Be ready for, above all, emotion, the heavy evocations, the kinds of moments in your life that can't be put into words yet can be excellently encapsulated by a song, by its notes, by its tones, by its tempo. Watching For Foxes really forged something here; one can feel the fire. 

Watching For Foxes join the lineup at Putnam's HalloweenFriday, Oct 21
with Jack & The Bear, Shapes & Colors and many more
starting at 6pm
At The Crofoot (Hosted by Eternally Nocturnal)
More info