Music Review & Artist Interview: Humbird’s Still Life
Local singer-songwriter Humbird’s upcoming sophomore album, Still Life, is an experimental Nordic-synth-folk meditation on healing and building for each of our bruised and battered souls.
Humbird’s Still Life album artwork, 2021.
I’ve been sifting through the detritus of my pandemic-fogged brain lately trying to remember when I first stumbled upon Humbird’s 2019 debut album, Pharmacon. For those who have yet to stumble upon her themselves, let me introduce you. Meet singer-songwriter Siri Undlin (stage name Humbird), a Minneapolis native who self-identifies as an “experimental folk/environmental Americana” musician and artist.
Somehow, I feel like I should’ve discovered her far sooner than whenever I actually did. But, when I simultaneously realized that I was going to have a new album of hers to enjoy soon and I would get to have a chat with her about it at a late-summer music festival, I felt the pandemic-fog lifting, even if only for a moment.
Back in late August, I sat backstage for a chat with Undlin after her set at the Great River Folk Festival in La Crosse, Wisconsin. After bonding over our experiences spending long stretches of time in Ireland, relishing traditional Irish music at our fingertips, we spoke about how integral art has been for each of us over the past year and a half in particular. “Art is essential to survival—always has been,” Undlin explained. “I think being honest about what you’re living through is the best way to communicate, and we have to share all of this. It’s funny how divisive things are right now because, really, we have so much more in common than we’ve ever had.”
Earlier in the festival, Undlin had introduced one of her older songs with a declaration that “folk music speaks truth,” so I asked her to elaborate on that. “A critical aspect of folk music, in my opinion, is being able to walk in someone else’s shoes. Even if you can’t understand their experience enough to be sympathetic toward it, you can’t be an isolationist asshole and write a good folk song, because it’s about the people and people’s experiences. If you’re not willing to step outside your own head-up-your-you-know-what, it’s probably not folk music.”
Humbird (Siri Undlin). Photo credit: Dahli Durley, 2021.
A truly pandemic-experience album “through and through,” Still Life was produced and engineered by longtime friend, roommate, and fellow musician Adelyn “Addie” Strei (who performs under the stage name Adelyn Rose and plays synth and woodwind on the album), recorded in their bedrooms. Both artists had a strong desire “to make safe space” with the album, to “create a song that’s a place people can go to heal or cry...to do whatever they need to do.”
Although the album was a “bedroom record,” Undlin describes the feeling of making the album as “moving through a house and opening up different doors. And I hope people feel that, too; that they can go into any of these rooms and just hang out there to get whatever they need. In terms of sound, two artists in particular influenced what we were going for: Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør and Icelandic singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini. So, it’s a sort of synth-pop Nordic album.”
I was already a huge fan of Torrini but had never heard of Sundfør, so I looked her up when I got home—holy crap; I’m utterly smitten. Later, once I was able to listen to Still Life, I could hear a strong elemental energy infused throughout that’s very much a part of those two Nordic artists’ styles—perfect for the soundscapes Still Life explores.
“A lot of the record comes back to me understanding about how the micro and the macro are linked,” Undlin says. “There’s a lot of domestic language in this album: there’s a verse about forks, doing the dishes, cleaning the house, making the bed. There are all these repetitive metaphors and similes that I was using to talk about the big stuff I couldn’t understand, and that felt like a cool way to approach it.”
Undlin adds: “Between me writing the songs, Addie producing it, and Holly Hansen of Salon Sonics who mixed the album, it was really cool to take these domestic tools of language to tackle the big stuff that was going on around us that felt insurmountable, and to do that with three women at the helm was really powerful. How many records have that? I don’t even know. While it was happening, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that; we were just doing it. But when I listen back to it, I think people will feel that three women did this.”
There were plenty of other collaborators on the album—including long-time band members Pat Keen on bass and Pete Quirsfeld on drums and percussion and additional collaborators Hilary James, Clifton Nesseth, Dave Power, Rachel Reis, Luke Callen, and Elliot Heinz—some of whom are not women, Undlin notes. “It was never intentional to be a girls-only thing. But, when I listen back to it now, there is a fluidity and flexibility to these songs that’s inherent to female-identifying experiences about how to move through the world and survive, to be safe and be okay.”
Humbird (Siri Undlin). Photo credit: Dahli Durley, 2021.
Back when Humbird’s first album Pharmacon was released, the Star Tribune described it as a blend of “ancient fairy tales and biblical stories with vignettes and imagery from Undlin’s modern life.” In that sense, Still Life takes this aesthetic and theme a step or five further, giving the listener gentle permission to be swept up in a sonic slipstream, following the current into an enchanted realm of solace as a means of flight over fight, such as in “My Pillow Is A River” and “May.”
Other songs on the album are rooted firmly in the now and the tangible, more about hope than a lesson, such as “Summer Storm for Charlotte.” Amid the swirl of grief, violence, anger, and fear after the murder of George Floyd last year, Undlin witnessed her young neighbor friend, Charlotte, learn to ride a bike. This powerful moment of normalcy left an indelible impression, all the while the riots raged and uprising keened right outside their doors.
Overall, each song meditates on healing and building, both as an individual and as a member of society, and of imagining something better for the self and for everyone—not exclusively one or the other.
“May,” the first single released from Still Life, remains my favorite off the album, and quite possibly my favorite song in general right now. In early September, I posted my reaction to it in our Instagram feed, which still describes how I feel each time I listen to it:
“May” is a gorgeous lullaby of acoustic guitar, subtle and gently fluttering horns and woodwinds, and a whisper synth like blowing bubbles in water that curl gently around Humbird’s lilting, soft yet confident vocals that—swear to gawd—twinkle at the edges and soar towards the end just before letting us go. “May” is a Siddhartha-like meditation on finding peace, hope, and love for yourself and others amid pain, uncertainty, loneliness, and loss, making something beautiful from the hurt. I’ve listened to this song so many times now and I literally cry each time.
According to Undlin, “‘May’ reflects on love, as it moves through our lives, transforms, and then returns. The lyrics use the metaphor of a river to explore these ideas, and Addie and I wanted the arrangement to sound and feel like a breathing forest or organisms...strange and surreal, but grounded in the natural world, and the imagination and creativity that surrounds us.” The only song on the album written prior to the pandemic, it uncannily fits the mood of the times.
Humbird (Siri Undlin). Photo credit: Dahli Durley, 2021.
Whether it be experimenting with atmospheric electronic elements, sprinkling in a bit of country, or weaving in a touch of whimsical woodwinds, each choice feels like an exploration of how sounds and styles can naturally influence and heighten one another. This approach and resulting sound—playing with but not disregarding genres—leads listeners somewhere unexpected, to a place where they can carve out the space needed to breathe and dream without losing sight of what’s most important. And while each song stands solid on its own, it’s the whole of the album as one living organism that’s most breathtaking.
Back at the Great River Folk Festival, Humbird performed “Pink Moon For John Prine,” which she explained was initially written as a response to the death of Americana great John Prine last year from COVID-19. But, as songs are wont to do, it ended up encompassing so much more: what Prine has meant to countless musicians and music lovers alike and what magic that can be—to move people with music. In this and so many other ways, Still Life is just that—magic.
To celebrate the release of the album—which drops tomorrow (10/15), Humbird will perform as a four-piece band (Undlin, Keen, Power, and special guest Strei) in residency every Wednesday in November at Icehouse in Minneapolis. See you there!
Jaclyn Nott. Photo credit: Cody Weber.
The graphic designer, webmaster, writer, and editor for the Adventures in Americana site, Jaclyn Nott enjoys a wiiiide range of music—and Americana is just one of many favorites. Her main hustle is grant writing, content writing/editing, and web design, but her true passion is screen- and creative writing.
