November 26, 2009
A Fast Winter Friend: Lee & Willbee - “North Carolina”
Those of us who have lived in northern enough climes to experience snow in the winter months are the ones who, I think, can most perfectly relate to the mood of Lee & Willbee’s debut album North Carolina. A dichotomy of cold and warm permeates the album; much like the shiver of reality you receive emerging from bed on a frigid winter morning, with covers still wrapped tightly around your shoulders, planting your feet on the shock of cold floor, you move to evaluate what the world has brought overnight. When you pull your curtains, the world that awaits you is silent and pristine in a layer of white. It is a scene both familiar and strange, where each step forward is uncharted, no matter how many times you’ve walked that same path. North Carolina seeks to warm that snowbound silence, as much as it urges you to go out into that cold whitened landscape and explore the world anew.
Though North Carolina is moody and melancholy, this geographically dispersed threesome’s folk-meets-Notwist sound still maintains enough humor to celebrate life’s simpler pleasures: fornication, a 40 and a sack, and the resignation of self determination. The making of North Carolina recalls the making of Postal Service’s Give Up as it was crafted and recorded by three friends who currently live thousands of miles apart: Markus Willbee in Salt Lake City, Lee Chameleon in Chicago, and guitarist Patrick Roche in Seattle. The comparisons don’t stop there, songs like “Loves Not Worth It,” feature the long delay and reverb of early Death Cab records and the album swoons with the downtrodden yet warm electronic strains of the Postal Service. Unlike other current Postal Service comparisons, this isn’t a “Ben Gibbard should kick these guys in the shins” comparison, rather the spirit of the album and how it was made is much in the same vein of what made Give Up so special.
Though electronic elements are threaded throughout the record, the nine songs still retain a distinctly low-key “bedroom” feel that envelops the listener and communicates the analog reality of the material. Given it’s such an intimate sounding album, North Carolina is best when listened to on headphones, or while driving alone in the car, where the beat of windshield wipers on high seem to perfectly keep time with tracks like “North Carolina” and “Tumbleweed.” The stand out track of the album “Day of Sunshine,” which journeys from weeping resignation to reassuring anthem, is one of my most listened to songs of 2009. North Carolina is an album well-equipped to warm the freeze of a mid-western sized blizzard or a broken heart, and it is filled with reminders to keep moving in the wake of loneliness and lost love. It is a fast winter friend.
It seems I wasn’t the only one who felt a distinct sense of season with this record. The person who filmed the band’s first video for the song “Snowtrain” used dark winter scenes entirely:
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