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Apr 30, 2021 Web Exclusive By Ben Jardine

For an album nine years in the making, becalmyounglovers is a remarkably calm study of life transitions for Bowerbirds’ Phillip Moore. Moore recorded the bulk of Bowerbirds’ fourth record in the isolated cabin that he and his former partner and Bowerbirds colleague, Beth Tacular, built with their own hands. Since 2012’s The Clearing, the pair split, Tacular left the band, Moore took time off touring, and Bowerbirds went on hiatus. Now Moore is back, and is openly processing the events of the past decade.

The inevitable beauty-via-pain that accompanies such significant life events is the record’s throughline. One can find it in the hopeful plucking of “Pennies” or in the heart-wrenching act of saying goodbye in “Moon Phase”: that difficult acceptance, that search for positivity during a difficult time.

Moore’s heartfelt songwriting expertly documents that questioning, that confusion of moving on. “It’s going to be just a gentle breeze/Feel like a hurricane/What can I even say?/Where would I be without you?,” he sings on “Can U Beleeb.” Later, “Sweet Dissonance” is raw and flows with the air of a home recording, while “The Party” appears like a folk song for the 21st century.

In all, becalmyounglovers is a message to Moore’s past, present, and future selves; and by extension, Moore is writing to all of us as well. (www.bowerbirds.org)

Author rating: 7/10