"To be honest, we don't read too much about ourselves."
Trevor Hobbs is the percussionist for the Michigan trio Breathe Owl Breathe. He's also stumped when a journalist cites Nick Drake - he of Pink Moon fame - as a sonic double for the band and the number of times the band is lumped in with Drake.
"It's actually a deliberate thing, the decision not to read what people say about us," Hobbs said.
Breathe Owl Breathe does whimsy without being silly and folk without being precious. Lead singer Micah Middaugh has a talky way of singing, and cellist-singer Andrea Moreno-Beals nearly sighs her vocals while Hobbs keeps a gentle beat and layers in metallic taps and rattles.
The band has been touring in support of its 2010 album, Magic Central, the follow up to 2009's Ghost Glaciers.
"I think for Magic Central, we were trying to do most of the instrumentation ourselves," Hobbs said. "We had some friends who helped us out on the instrumentation and different things for Ghost Glaciers, and we knew on Magic Central we wanted to do them ourselves. So we had to experiment with a lot of different things."
That experiment yielded a more layered, complex sound on Magic. By comparison, Ghost Glaciers lives up to its title.
It's spare and suggestive, an album that is quiet, spacious and lonely. Glaciers sounds like it might have been written as a contemporary chamber music record, which Hobbs attributes to the "cello-focused" nature of the record.
The experiment also nudged the threesome to rethink the way they make music.
"We try to use a different creative process on every project," Hobbs said. "It is kind of risky, because you never know what you're going to get. But that also means that you might discover some things you never expected to find."
That's not to say that Magic Central is loud. It isn't. But each of the 12 tracks on the album seem to billow out from a seed of melody. And most of the music on the album feels happy, if serenely so.
In "Swimming," Hobbs provides the bubbles that float to the surface and pop with a melodic ping. Even "Lion's Jaw" has an all's-well-that-ends-well feel to it. Hobbs isn't just a metronome, either. His rhythms provide tones and notes, too.
"A big part of creating these songs, for us, is learning them on tour," Hobbs said. "A version of a song might exist only live, and we do it that way on tour, and then when we go into the studio, we realize that there are a bunch of different ways to do a song, and then when we go back out on tour, we play it differently."
The band will have a limited number of their latest project, a book that comes with a 7-inch record. The book includes two tales inspired by true stories, "The Listeners (The Mole & the Ostrich)" and "These Train Tracks."
The band is touring the Southwest briefly with solo artist Laura Gibson.
LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is
cbreeding@dentonrc.com .
 
Breathe Owl Breathe
With Laura Gibson. 9 p.m. Tuesday at Dan's Silverleaf, 103 Industrial St. Tickets are $8 in advance, $12 at the door. For tickets, visit www.spunetickets.com . Call 940-320-2000.
