When Kris Orlowski released Believer last year, the album was promoted as a debut full-length for the Seattle songwriter. That was a bit of a stretch, since Orlowski has been releasing albums for the past ten years.
But I’m not going to quibble here, because Believer did sound like a debut for Orlowski. Throughout the album his croony folk songs were emboldened by intricate sparkling production from Martin Feveyear. It was a different sound, closer to Coldplay than Josh Ritter, and, to my ear, it worked, marking a fresh start for the songwriter.
But Orlowski is, at heart, an acoustic guitar guy and so we have, today, a new free EP from him with all the markings of the modern folk idiom. The three-songs were recorded at Columbia City Theater—a roots-friendly venue that Head and the Heart and Fleet Foxes fans are familiar with—and they were produced in an “unplugged” fashion by Damien Jurado, who despite more recent psychedelic experimentation is something of a contemporary indie folk hero.
And then there is the music on Orlowski’s Columbia Theater Sessions, which provides a different look at some of the material from Believer, taking those big songs back to their origins.
A new version of the album’s title track, and first single, has the singer keeping time on the acoustic guitar and his bandmates trading in their instruments for harmony. Orlowski has contended that the song has no particular religious meaning, it’s message a more broad one, but this new treatment sounds fit for a cathedral. Just sayin’.
“Fighting the War,” another single from Believer, is filled out with istrumentation, but here, under Jurado’s guiding hand, the song is more contemplative, peaceful, than Feveyear’s bombastic treatment. And, in that way, it’s more true to the song, which is about “saying no to fighting the wars of yesterday.”
But the one new track here, “Winter Winter,” is perhaps the most folkie song that Orlowski has ever recorded, his vocal slightly distant, degraded, as he strums like Dylan to a simple song that I believe utilizes the seasons to explore the vagaries of love, though, between the recording approach and Orlowski’s loose-lipped singing style, I can’t quite make out all of the lyrics.
Nonetheless, it’s a song that wouldn’t fit on Believer. It’s smaller, more precious, a sign of what Orlowski has left behind. The question, then, is whether it signals a farewell to that old sound or a retreat from the bigger bolder Orlowski who debuted last year.
Perhaps the answer will be revealed when Orlowski and band take the stage at the Triple Door on February 5 to kick off a West Coast tour.
