Horse Feathers: Cynic’s New Year

Date
04/17/2012

On April 17, 2012, Portland-based Indie Folk-Pop quartet Horse Feathers will release Cynic’s New Year, a much anticipated (LP) follow up to 2010′s Thistled Spring, which has been on repeat in my car, ipod, spotify (umm, you get the idea) ever since its release. Horse Feathers makes music that instills in you a sudden desire to drive to nearest field and feel the grass speak to your hands; then, get back in your car and drive all around this great country of ours, filling your head with stories of “how good life it” from the kind of people who made it that way— salty, plaid-shirted, broad-smiled, simple-living folks for whom Daylights Savings Time actually means something. It’s companion music, for early mornings when your eyes get to feel green all over again. 

In three week’s time, I’ll be seeing them live (hooray), so please stay tuned for videos and pictures. 

Here is their new song “Fit Against the Country”

To the best of my ability, here are the lyrics:

Common weather comes with a name
And our knees our hands got the shakes
Cause when our backs about to break
We won’t howl out or cry
We know we feel we try
In the middle of an everlasting fight 

Every night we all go to the house we’ll never own
Every night we are tired, we’ve been worked to the bone
Nearly every day, we earn a lower wage
To tell you what we were made of, or a wage is we’re paid
It’s a hard country we’ve made

Here we are, far beyond our means
Learnin how to trade love for things
Theres a debt we cant pay 
What kind of life’s lived this way.
See our hands they praise
Telling us we are to pray

Nearly every day it was a darker kind of way 
The color we all knewthis world 
The deepest shade of gray

Chorus: 
Every night we all go to a house we’ll never own
Every night we are tired, we’ve been worked to the bone
Nearly every day, we earn a lower wage
To tell you what we were made of, or a wage is what we’re paid
It’s a hard country we’ve made

We won’t howl out or cry
We know we feel that we try
What kind of life’s lived this way? 
See our hands they praise

If you liked Horse Feathers, I’d urge you to also check out the following:

A ful album stream via NPR’s Listen First series

Music Savage’s recent Spring Mix, featuring “Fit Against the Country,” and other songs that are just as lovely, or more so. 

Songs for the Day’s Music Mix from last December, featuring a cover that Horse Feathers did of Nirvana’s “Drain You.”