Portland's Ah Holly Fam'ly specialize in homespun, artfully skewed indie-folk that feels grounded in its hometown, a vibrant and lovely expression of the Pacific Northwest's embrace of communal weirdness and lovingly handcrafted artisanal products. The songs on Reservoir, the group's debut full-length, rise and fall with the rhythm of contented sighs, banjos plunking, guitars drowsily keeping time, violins tracing out slightly irregular versions of Celtic reels. You've heard pieces of all of this before: there's a whiff of Zach Condon's modern gypsy music in the horns of "Salt of the Century"; an inviting touch of Grizzly Bear's big, drafty Yellow House in the soft woodwinds that light "All Unfolding" like lamp glow; and the group choruses will remind you of Sufjan's all-together-now sing-a-longs.

But Ah Holly Fam'ly's world is a slightly weirder and more unpredictable place. For starters, they leave everything feeling alluringly half-finished, inkblots of folk songs we fill in with our imaginations. Songs take intriguingly odd left turns; "Young Veins" perks up unexpectedly from its original tempo into a neat little double-time jig just before ending, and on "Rainstick," lead singer Jeremy Faulkner's vocals sound piped in from a transistor radio through an apartment wall. Intimate,… read more »