Send "Breathe Owl Breathe " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Last summer I saw Breathe Owl Breathe live at a McMenamin’s Pub in Bend, Oregon. Even though they were playing a small venue in a small town hundreds of miles from their native Michigan, they seemed totally at home. Lead singer Micah Middaugh told hilarious, incoherent, rambling stories; cellist Andrea Moreno-Beals impersonated (if I remember correctly) a tiger. All three band members wore capes. The audience was good-sized and diverse: shy indie kids, couples with children, grandparents. All told, Breathe Owl Breathe played for three hours, and we were entranced. We sang and clapped along at the band’s direction to songs we had never heard before; at one point in the evening, every kid in the house under 12 years old was seated in a semicircle at the band’s feet.That’s the kind of generous stage presence Breathe Owl Breathe have. They’ve gathered a larger following than you’d expect given their idiosyncratic, niche-y folk. Middaugh kind of sounds like Bill Callahan, and he kind of writes like him too—elusive little story-songs that follow their own unpredictable logic. It’s good stuff, but not something you’d expect to be crowd-pleasing. The band’s strength on stage is that, through contagious energy and audience participation, they invite even the most uninitiated listener into their strange little world. It’s a refreshing reminder that even the most out-there music can be accessible when a performer crosses the boundary and connects with the audience. On their first two records and one EP, Breathe Owl Breathe weren’t quite able to duplicate that energy. Though good, those records are more austere and distant; their riches are for those who dig pretty deep. One can hardly blame a band who’s toured Alaska for prioritizing their live show over their records. But their latest album, Magic Central, is their first for a label, Portland’s Home Tapes, and it’s clear that the band is shooting for a more accessible recorded sound....full text |
| Theredalert |
| Michigan’s Breathe Owl Breathe are not new on the scene – they’ve been together since 2004 – but they are admittedly/unfortunately new to these ears. To say that Magic Central is the sound of a band that has arrived, a band that has crystallized, is not meant, then, to scold the trio’s past work, but rather to celebrate the new. Their sound/vision/identity/whatever just feels fully executed. It’s neither the weightiest nor the most revolutionary album you’ll be apt to hear this fall, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find indie-pop that’s more engaging or better crafted. There’s an organic folksiness to the trio that’s perhaps to be expected for a band that’s set up camp in the woods of Michigan. Nature is a recurring muse. Despite the wintry-looking album cover and song titles like “Icy Cave Dancers,” though Magic Central is anything but a glacially paced or emotionally frozen album. Instead, the mood is kept warm and light, even on the quieter stretches. The gentle “Across the Loch” sounds like a not-so-distant cousin of Yo La Tengo (when YLT is in their And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out sort of mood). That’s about as far as that shadow goes, aside from the general indie guy-gal vocal interplay (Micah Middaugh and Andrea Moreno-Beals are great together). Middaugh is the main man at the center of Breathe Owl Breathe. In his formative years, he discovered Jonathan Richman; while his own band doesn’t ape Richman and the Modern Lovers, a lesson about playfulness seems to have resonated. This is apparent throughout Magic Central, but particularly on the fanciful tall tale “Dragon,” a story of a princess who is unwittingly pen pals with a dragon. It begins: “You are a princess and we are pen pals / I’m a dragon, but you don’t need to know that / I’ve been working on my penmanship.” A flight of fancy, to be sure, but Middaugh deftly walks the line between clever and cloying, never pushing it too far – and keeping even stories about dragons grounded with disarming lyrics and emotional nuance....full text |
| Piccadillyrecords |
| In a Lincoln Log cabin in deep rural Michigan live and work Micah Middaugh, Trevor Hobbs, and Andréa Moreno-Beals. This is Breathe Owl Breathe. The trio's new album, "Magic Central", will be released on Hometapes. More than just a record, Breathe Owl Breathe have created a timeless aural cartogram of feeling, soul, skill, and story. You could have found it in the attic. It could have dropped from outer space. The best way to learn about "Magic Central" is to listen. The second best way is to read what the band has to say about it. This story is theirs. A lot of songs on "Magic Central" were born out of our experiences living at the cabin (our home). Many of the characters on the album were a reflection of what we were going through at the time. Micah had lived there by himself for quite some time, working on setting up his print making studio, and battling keep the place warm through the winter. Trevor and Andréa would come up to the cabin when they could (before and after shows and small tours), finding Micah mixing inks and sustaining himself on peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Eventually, we were all there together, and the cabin became our refuge for making art and music together. The place transformed from solely being Micah’s print studio into a place for recording, recreating (there’s a badminton net in the front yard), working on art projects, and living. The separation between the printing press, the kitchen, the light table, and the old piano was starting to blur...printed t-shirts by the drumset, mail under the toy piano, marimba next to the dart board, cello leaning against the light table... There was never a time when an instrument or an old book was too far out of reach. At one point, we used the field of fresh snow as a surface to project Last of the Mohicans, and watched from the upstairs window [Daniel Day Lewis and the triumphant music echoing in the valley...'No matter how long it takes, I will find you!']. The cabin slowly morphed into Magic Central - a place where there is no distinction between working, creating, songwriting, practicing, and playing. So we started recording a lot at the cabin… on our 16 track, on cassette tapes, and VHS. Trevor would spend the late hours playing piano, and Andréa would be downstairs on cello. Micah was always recording us from another room while improvising lyrics over our music. Other times, Micah would go for a run and come back with a lyric or an idea for a combination of instruments, and they’d eventually turn into songs. In those initial months together, we came up with a ton of song ideas, constantly working with what we were surrounded by. Late in the summer (2009), we started recording with Jim Roll in the studio. Many of the songs were still simple ideas when we started laying them down - maybe just a lyric, or a banjo or piano line - and our goal was to let the studio shape the song arrangements. We knew we wanted to do the instrumentation for the album all ourselves - like doing our own stunts. We wanted the challenge of digging deep with the instruments we were familiar with [as well as the instruments we didn’t know well at all]. In the studio, we were constantly trying out different instrumentation [and recording approaches], trying to take advantage of the opportunity that the studio offers to collage songs together. The goal was to get as much recorded as possible, and spend the following months sculpting out an album....full text |
Breathe Owl Breathe lyrics
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