We Are The Willows is the full band art-pop project started by Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Peter Miller (a.k.a. Peter M.). Their sonically explorative full-length album IV, out via the Youngbloods imprint is a nod to this being the band’s fourth LP as well as a reference to Inside Voice, the writing partnership between Miller and cellist Hilary James.

IV is an album that grows like a seedling in a Petri dish.

It’s immediately interesting, you want to watch the tiny buds burst out of the seed all day long, you can’t take your eyes off it. Then you acclimate to its rhythm and little quirks and it starts to just be part of your moment — you focus on other things for a bit and forget how cool it is that this thing is right beside you… like, living and shit! Then you turn back to it and baaaaammm… it’s completely different now! A whole new thing! How did we get here?

Play back the tape, I want to listen again please.

This is an odd thing to say for a “band.” It’s not like they’re reinventing themselves with every song, playing all kinds of different instruments. Rather, We Are The Willows is such an exploratory pop project that you get lost in the lushness of their songcraft until they find a way to jog you out of it. One sort of never knows where to look for that next beautiful melody to come in. It comes from everywhere!

Was that a clarinet?

Wait, who’s got the top line right now? Is the cello playing the bass line? Is this a round?

And all of a sudden, just like that, you’re head-banging in your car and whistling at the top of your lungs, and the Petri dish has a full plant growing out of it. It’s full-band composing, even if its the true brainchild of just two members, and it’s stunning.

I love music like that. And it’s rarer than I wish it was these days to hear it. In fact, Miller and James’ writing and arranging recall some of the mid-2000s indie gems like Grizzly Bear, Ra Ra Riot, and Stars (at least to my aging, nostalgia-scarce ears) that I feel might’ve done the thing “too well” in their tenure, thus putting next-gen bands off to that tesseract-shaped voicing style altogether.

The compliment buried underneath all this, with regards to the duo’s refreshing writing spirit and fervour, is that perhaps the greatest gift of We Are The Willows is that to any old pair of ears, this album definitely feels both familiar and foreign no matter where you drop the needle.

Listen to the strong album opener here:

Chapter 2: What, actually, is “Art Pop?”

I guess it’s a prompt more than a statement in and of itself: “Well, Pop is definitively formulaic and designed for the masses, but this is Art so it’s cutting edge, unforgiving, personal, disruptive!”

In my reading of this stylistic catch-all, it sort of invites artists to seek uncommon paths for connection with wider swaths of audiences, through experimenting with production, performance, compositional tactics, arranging best practices, and/or constructions of form and structure. But keeping focus on that connection, instead of the isolation that would normally accompany said experimentation.

Ironically, in seeking these individualistic means of expression, acts aren’t exactly seeking out to connect with other bands or acts engaged in similar investigations. So the concept of corralling these unique artists together into a genre is… well, moot. (Isn’t it always?)

Don’t get me wrong at all: I’m all for lexicological classifiers. (What is marketing if not descriptive pomp and imagistic whetting?) And, as opposed to what I just mentioned about the whole point of “Art Pop” being to carve out uniqueness, rather than homogeneity, We Are The Willows does share a lot of great characteristics with great bands and artists striving for a similar effect (some of whom may even have been influences for WATW’s sonic sculpting).

Think: The Dirty Projectors, Buke & Gase, Tune-Yards, Deerhoof, Björk, ffs!

But then again, Lady Gaga’s 2013 record, ARTPOP, is kind of the big, black cloud shadowing over the picnic. Something we all wish wasn’t there but at the same time, we might as well pack our things and seek cover, because it very much is.

Donned by tracks like “Sexxx Dreams,” “Jewels N’ Drugs,” and the mega-concise “Dope,” this album is so egregiously unlistenable that I’m not sure Lady Gaga really accomplished anything, anyway, but clearly this was more an attempt to nestle up a bit closer to Madonna’s whole aura, or Bowie’s, or maybe score free talking points at her next Met Gala appearance. Having enlisted Jeff Koons and some of the world’s highest net-worth producers, this music is more like a thematic plaything than an honest swing at artful disruption. Really no sphere is off limits when your budget is a blank check. I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that the release of ARTPOP also came with a new special at Taco Bell.

But that’s looking at “Art Pop” from the top down… which, not useful! How about spinning the looking glass upward?

Firstly, the Minnesota/Wisconsin scene is a breeding ground for incredible, boundary-pushing music of all sorts. The creative sparring going on between cohorts up there around the lakes and pubs must just be off the charts. What better an environment to really experiment and push the envelope creatively?

And thinking about what that terminology might mean to Miller and his mates (if anything at all!), I wonder if their deepest pursuits revolve around finding a multiplicity of avenues towards cohesion and odd beauty. There are moments on IV that somehow sound broken and yet so perfectly aligned; from a melodic voice-leading standpoint, from the use of real-time processing, from the way instruments feel recorded “improperly” and in separate rooms, from the roles that instruments and voices play and how they sometimes swap traditional responsibilities. It’s almost like if you took apart a radio, put all the elements back together completely wrong, and yet it still somehow produced a signal when plugged in.

How is this musical house of cards standing up?!

That’s what makes this listen to compelling from start to finish. Unabashedly gorgeous. No. Really. It’s a terrifyingly lush record, and more so because of how surprising that accomplishment is given all the experimentation with form.

I would venture to say that in its best case scenario, “Art Pop” forces one into staying active throughout the listening experience. Whereas most mainstream pop wants you not to peel back too many layers or peek under rocks, this beckons you to examine every nook and cranny confidently.

Here’s a great example:

Okay genres aside… Just a few more words on this project.

Isn’t music sometimes like a raft?

Yeah, you know, a makeshift amassment of wooden planks held together with twine that acts as a floatation device.

All of the individual logs in a raft float but you kind of need to tie them together to make it functional, greater than the sum of its parts no doubt. More parts, held together, is stronger, more maneuverable, more resilient. This describes most bands I guess.

But before this metaphor starts to really get ahead of me, the joy of We Are The Willows’ IV is that it’s a project that strives for a mark of individuality that actually requires a group, not an individual voice, to accomplish. Isn’t that classy? Which is why when I listen back to this record on repeat — me feeling lucky enough to have done that today — my focus pulls between individual elements momentarily sticking out, and the strangely effective cohesiveness of the total unit operating together.

I also sometimes imagine ideas, as rivers. We at least need a guide, if not a vessel, to make it all the way through the journey of someone’s musical mind. This is a well-built raft, on a compelling river.

One last track listen to cap this off:

Please check out We Are The Wilows’ gorgeous, devastating, courtesy of Youngbloods, via the link below.

Listen and purchase here, please.