Audio By Carbonatix
Catch Bees is one Philip Waggoner, a Fort Collins resident and multi-instrumentalist, but on his new release, Newman’s Open Choir, his dreamy chamber pop is strained through roughly ten other players. No instrument was denied entrance at the door: Throughout thirteen tracks, the songbird and his sound team rotate through slide, electric, bass and acoustic guitars, piano, organ, harmonica, violin, cello, trumpet and even glockenspiel to create jaunty, expansive folk that functions less as an album than as a soundtrack for a delicate, overtly quirky rom-com. (It happened for the Shins, after all.) While most of the careful, verse-focused tracks hover around a five on the enthusiasm scale, they replace rising tempos with crests of wandering, whimsical instrumentation. “St. Thomas” is entirely a piano solo, while “Simulacra” centers on breezy percussion — no vocals necessary. And with the exception of a few nap-along excerpts, most of the tunes are sing-alongs, or, as evidenced by Waggoner’s use of recorded hands, clap-alongs.
