Breathe Owl Breathe, Ghost Glacier

Micah Middaugh, the gangly, loose-limbed lead singer and guitarist for Breathe Owl Breathe (onstage, he exudes the demeanor of an enthusiastic, over-grown lab puppy), told us last year when BoB became an eMusic Selects band that he didn't speak a word until he was four years old. As he explained to us, "I kinda felt like everything around me was — I felt like I was taken care of. In those four years, it was a lot of touch and smell and taste — I was just taking it in." Listening to the Ghost Glacier EP, and now this full-length, you get the feeling, maybe, that this gentle sense of well-being and wonder is the secret to — something, anyway, and that this "something" might help explain why his simple, communal folk-pop songs are so disarming. His lyrical world is full of fearsome sabretooth tigers who only wish to attend school; lovelorn, lonely pirates searching despondently for treasure; and overgrown baseball diamonds where divorced fathers play half-hearted catch with their sons — in other words, a world where whimsy and pathos live in the same breath, and neither trip over each other into treacle.

BoB gives each one of these little Ray Davies-in-The-Phantom-Tollbooth characters a perfectly running little folk-pop buggy to tool around in, a humming blend of folksy finger-picking, homemade knocks and clacks, and Andréa Moreano-Beals 'gorgeous cello, which sighs melody lines that dip and warble with a loopy generosity. Sometimes, she chimes in on backup vocals, and she sounds almost exactly like Billie Holiday as channeled by Minnie Mouse. The full-length version of Ghost Glacier is a little more autumnal in mood than the EP — the hook of "Linda" is a wistful, wordlessly hummed refrain that calls to mind late-period Tom Petty — and the touch of darkness means the album lingers longer. My favorite moment on the entire album, perhaps, is on "Baseball Diamond" where Middaugh jokes, "I feel as strong as a jungle cat" — cue goofy tiger noise — before the music drops out completely, and he sighs: "I'm kiddin. I feel….pretty bad." Then the music kicks back in, and he's got that sad-eyed smile back. And you? You're a puddle.