The Hackles will release their third studio album, What a beautiful thing I have made, on April 7th on Jealous Butcher Records.
The Hackles are Kati Claborn (vocals/guitar/banjo/clarinet) and Luke Ydstie (vocals/guitar/bass/keys) of Blind Pilot, and Halli Anderson (vocals/violin) of River Whyless and Horse Feathers. In 2017, Halli moved to Astoria, OR, serendipitously just houses away from Kati and Luke. Their musical lives were already intertwined, Blind Pilot and River Whyless having toured together, but their newfound proximity led to collaboration on several fronts. Halli began recording and playing shows with the Hackles, and Kati and Luke stepped into the line-up of Horse Feathers, led by Halli’s partner Justin Ringle. When 2020 hit, they found themselves at home and unable to tour with their other bands, and began meeting regularly to write, play, and record together, with Halli being involved in the writing process for the first time.
What a beautiful thing I have made is infused with a sense of intimacy and an underlying tension is palpable in several of the songs, the result of the world it was created in, more uncertain than ever and also smaller and more interconnected in many ways. The whole album is firmly rooted in place, created within a very small radius around where they all lived, “not outside the riverbank”, above the Columbia River in Astoria, OR, written and recorded at their homes and in the Astoria-based Rope Room studio. Everyone involved lived nearby and were part of their musical community family.
Fittingly for an album made during a pandemic, What a beautiful thing I have made has themes of longing, regret and all the things that can’t be controlled in life — and how we try to make peace with that reality. The themes weave through the album, personal and weighty but with a sly side of fantasy novel references. It pushes the trio’s experimental folk sound and interest in playing with harmony, voice and genre.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout track “Birdcage,” a mysteriously beautiful work of indie folk that will appeal to fans of artists like Gillian Welch. But where The Hackles differ from the aforementioned folkstress is in the way they give their music a distinctive touch of the Pacific Northwest. Lovely layers of banjo and guitar interweave with powerful vocal harmonies that seems to capture the wild frontier spirit of the fishing town the band calls home.
Halli Anderson sheds some light on the the inspiration behind the track:
Here is an excerpt from an article that ran in The Daily Astorian the first week that I moved to town:
“A 19-year-old Astoria man was arrested early Tuesday morning on multiple charges after allegedly shooting a deer within the city limits.
Officers found a Nissan truck with a dead buck in the bed of the truck . . . . it was later determined that [he] shot the deer, gutted it and loaded it into his vehicle. Officers noted that the backdrop for the gunshot was the nearby Bayshore Apartments, and that [the man] appeared to be intoxicated.
‘ Fortunately, except for the deer, no one else was harmed . . . ‘ – said Astoria Deputy Police Chief Eric Halverson.”
LISTEN:
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