Send "A Weather " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 To call A Weather’s music understated is almost an understatement. Trading in muted instrumentation, breathy sighs and slow tempos, the band crafts somnambulant studies of domesticity and loneliness that invite the listener to fill in the gaps. If this all sounds a bit tedious, it’s not. On record, the band brings to bear a mastery of quiet desperation and space, resulting in emotionally nuanced songs worth leaning in for. On their sophomore LP, Everyday Balloons, the Portland quartet nudges up the volume dial ever so slightly, bringing in electric instruments and comparatively lush arrangements. However, like on their debut LP, Cove, the band continues to wield white space like an additional instrument, giving these 11 songs ample room to breathe and expand. Once again, the vocal interplay between guitarist Aaron Gerber and drummer Sarah Winchester provides a sonic anchor, with an increased focus on harmonization this time around. Gerber’s drowsy, resigned whisper sets the tone here, opening up “Third of Life” with the lament, “No matter when I wake up / the day always is the same length”, atop a gently fingerpicked guitar line. After the first verse, Winchester enters, providing a husky, emotive counterpoint to Gerber while bright electric guitars blossom all around and drums tumble underneath. It’s a wake-up-call, albeit a gentle one....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| It appears that Portland's A Weather have made an effort to move away from the trappings of the tactics used in their 2008 debut, Cove. It may be to pushing it to say it's been a genuinely concerted one, but worries about Everyday Balloons teetering on the edge of 'maximum folk' have to be allayed slightly. Don't panic – there's no guitar shredding or screaming hordes of Japanese cult members, but it's essentially 'more of the same, but with an accent'. Notable changes in approach are overdriven electric guitars which, if not exactly ploughing through the scenery, at least try to, with a modicum of forcefulness. Occasionally it goes unnoticed, but the added emphasis is welcome. The primary problem is that, for – or indeed because of – all this record's gentle harmonies and floating, fey instrumentation, the impact it leaves, on the whole, is minimal. It is quite easy to let sullen tones and delicately arranged instruments fool your ear and mind into appreciating serenity as substance. It masks, in this case, not necessarily an outright lack of quality, but definitely a lack of abundance in quality. Indeed, as nice-sounding – and 'nice' is the correct word, if ever an adjective was an embodiment of 'damning with faint praise' – as the understated vocal harmonies between Sarah Winchester and Aaron Gerber are, you end up wanting to add some raw power to proceedings. Unfortunately, this happens not very often, if at all....full text |
| Zaptownmag |
| Maybe it’s a result of me getting older, but I enjoy the times when I can sit peacefully in the back room, setting the creak of the rocking chair in a rhythmic pace while enjoying the sun peering in or looking out into the woods while capturing the beauty from an occasional redbird that flies by. A book sits on my lap if one of my cats does not get there first. And it’s that moment of life’s satisfaction that you get, like the moments where you catch yourself breathing and you feel completely aware of that breath. It’s the essence of being alive. It’s that quiet solitude and pleasurable realization that I get out of A Weather’s Everyday Balloons. Aaron Gerber and Sarah Winchester move slow, about as slow as watching the flowers slowly come up in the spring. But it’s that slowness that reminds you to just sit back and soak it all in. The way Gerber and Winchester (Aaron Krenkel and Lou Thomas complete the lineup) work together to bounce off breathy vocals. It’s the confidence they feel that get you, but the apparent subtleties are enough not to step on each other’s toes....full text |
A Weather lyrics
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