Bark Hide and Horn is a four-man folk-rock orchestra hailing from Portland, Oregon. With their dynamic, passionate live shows and lush recordings, they are shimmying out on a distinctive limb of the indie-folk family tree. When singer-songwriter Andy Furgeson isn’t crooning soft, twangy melodies, he’s howling like a fanatical preacher. While he picks or pounds his guitar, Dusty Dybvig lets loose on the drums. If the song calls for it, Dusty will quiet down with brushes or mallets, but left to his own devices he’s an explosive beat machine. Peter Valois locks in on the bass with at once melodic and rhythmic lines, or conjures a soft and eerie air with the vibraphone, glockenspiel, or penny whistle. His vocal harmonies add a tinge of ’60s pop to the mix. Finally, Brian Garvey gives each song a unique treatment with a combination of bombastic trumpet, gritty mandolin, throbbing church organ, delicate electric piano, ephemeral synth, or junkyard percussion. With so many sonic options, the band can shift from plaintive folk to propulsive blues-rock in a heartbeat.
’National Road,’ the band’s first full-length, shows the full range of sounds BH&H is capable of creating. Digging deep into a basement closet full of stringed instruments, horns, odd percussion, and old electronic noise-makers, the boys flesh out their live sound with rich orchestrations, choral arrangements, and sonic experiments. Originally inspired by Andy’s collection of old National Geographic magazines, the record tells a tale about Melville Bell Grosvenor, editor of the magazine from 1957-’67. The grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, Melville was an innovator and (in Andy’s imagination) a madman. Possessed by the spirit of his grandfather, Melville takes a mystical journey through the perspectives of the silenced voices in National Geographic articles--an enslaved honey ant, a lovelorn treesnail, the disgruntled wife of a staff writer, even Ham, the first chimpanzee in outer space. With its wide variety of voices and sounds, ’National Road’ swells up like our bloated nation, bursting forth as the singular vision of an up-and-coming band.
