Pitchfork

Hindsight is blind, and Peter and the Wolf's Red Hunter knows this: On his band's (proper) debut album Lightness, he recalls past relationships to praise them, not to bury them. Hunter idealizes, even canonizes, girls gone by, rendering them all good, and all the same. This is also true of his music: Hunter uses few instruments, though always in gorgeous combinations. The result is a great winter album-- one that sounds recorded over a snow day, as if Hunter and company holed up in a warm cabin and made a bricolage record, with half-remembered memories of people they may have never met as a lyrical influence. It's a small album that fills a room.

And I'm not sure why, but I see the details of a room while I listen to Lightness-- smooth wood tables, warm air, natty wool rugs. Maybe it's because of the album's consistent textures: Hunter's roasted chestnuts voice (whose dryness sounds a little like Cat Stevens's or Richard Buckner's), soft sighs, and organic percussion. On tracks such as "Canada" Peter and the Wolf sound like they recorded on thick analog tape, or through a microphone wrapped in merino, though Hunter's timbre stays low and woody. There are no drums on Lightness, so percussion is charmingly lo-fi-- the heel of a palm striking the back of a guitar, or four beans rattling in a cup. Delicate guitar picking moves each track, along with "oohhh"s and "ahhh"s, which appear, murky or light, male and female, on almost every song.

This comes together on "Safe Travels", which begins with a little shaker and rising/falling sighs over hair-thin guitar chords. Here Hunter doesn't sing about ex-girlfriends, but keeps same general sentiment-- recalling the best in people he no longer knows. The rest of Lightness does the same for women who are in Hunter's life: "Dear Old Robyn", for example, is a sea shanty transposed to a touring band, a sort of "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" for dudes on the road. "I love you dear old Robyn/ I loved you all along/ To you I leave every word and every song," he and a pretty female voice sing together over bare guitar, about "a love that will never come to be."

On other songs, Hunter pines over fleeting love. Who are these girls, by the way, who salsa dance gracefully ("Silent Movies"), float through the window like the Virgin Mary ("Bonsai Tree"), and are worth waiting 10,000 years to meet ("The Owl")? By likening them to Mary (she's mentioned in "Grey Overcoat" as well, where he and a girl kiss under a statue of "Mary, white and good"), Hunter views them as eternally kind, never drunk or dating his best friend-- after all, he's comparing them to a woman who was born and died without sin. On the quaint "Silent Movies", Hunter sings, "Do you ever think of me when he's boring you?/ I bet you do".

Or maybe she's reminded of him because Hunter bores as well. That's the problem. The horn line in "Safe Travels" reminds us of the monotone that otherwise pervades Lightness. It's pretty much just vocals, guitar, and an egg shaker. Most of Lightness's 16 tracks don't cross the three-minute mark, and with so many sketches for so many sweethearts, it needs more variation. Only the bluesy, weird "Black Saltwater" and "Captain Dan"-- with its oil drum percussion and spiky electric guitar-- stray from the album's repetition. But its insular quality is a positive, too. Hunter has played shows in cemeteries, on rooftops, and on islands people can only canoe to, presenting his music in special, intimate ways. Similarly, Lightness is a small album that turns unplatonic relationships into their Platonic ideals, expanding with each glance backward.