Late in Horse Feathers‘ fifth album, So It Is with Us,
singer-guitarist Justin Ringle unleashes a provocative little five-word
phrase — “softly screaming, ‘woe is me'” — that’s summed up a lot of
the band’s music over the past decade. Ringle’s songs generally set
wearily fatalistic lyrics against a gentle backdrop of strings and
banjos and other exquisitely appointed Americana. But the grimness of
his words, the “woe is me” of it all, has always been swathed in
sweetness, to the point where a song’s suffocating misery can sound like
comfort food.
