David Kilgour A Feather In The Engine

On 9 August, 2024, Merge Records reissues David Kilgour's A Feather in theEngine, remastered and pressed on vinyl for the very first time. Originallyreleased in 2002, A Feather in the Engine followed two full-bandefforts_1997's David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights and The Clean's 2001 albumGetaway_and is thus almost startling in its intimacy.Recorded at home and mostly alone (The Verlaines' Graeme Downesprovides lush string arrangements), Kilgour once called A Feather in theEngine "the most solo LP I've made." Interpolating his genius for guitar popthrough acoustic guitars and gorgeous instrumentals, its melodies unfoldgently, suggesting that the 13 songs here, written over the course of fouryears, were searching Kilgour as much as he was searching them.The dichotomy between A Feather in the Engine's pop songs and instrumentalsfascinates the ear, drawing the listener closer and closer to Kilgour's virtuosicguitar playing when his lyrics aren't imparting his breezy charm. The depthof style he achieves_the psych pop of "Today IsGonna Be Mine," the Velvet Underground-esque churn of "All the Rest,"the chamber folk of "The Perfect Watch"_is daunting; listening to it now,every song feels capable of generating a dozen playlists, or like the spawningpoint of a new microgenre.Perhaps anomalous upon release, it's A Feather in the Engine's instrumentalsthat feel weightiest in this regard now. "Sept. 98" and "Backwards Forwards,"respectively the opening and closing tracks of the album, are elegant,pastoral epics that call out into the yawning expanse, presaging the simmeringambient country of William Tyler and SUSS, while "Instra 2" pushes outthe boundaries of Eastern-influenced psychedelia.Lovingly remastered (and in some cases remixed) from the original tapes byTom Bell at Port Chalmers Recording Services, the vinyl reissue of A Featherin the Engine is a crucial opportunity to rediscover one of David Kilgour'sbest records, a handcrafted gem that perfects guitar pop's p...