The Rabbit. The Owl presents two sides of the New Orleans indie-Americana-art band Mighty Brother. The Rabbit portion of this double album follows a relatively lighthearted country-rock, Americana trail. The Owl turns cerebral as the band expands into boundary-stretching material featuring carefully composed and arranged vocal and instrumental arrangements. It’s tempting to brand The Owl prog rock, but prog rock is more identified with classical music, not the jazz, pop and comparatively recent Americana and Radiohead music that’s affected Mighty Brother.
The Rabbit begins with “Summer Road,” a folk-country song with harmonica, twanging guitar and celebration of the open road. The twang returns in “Patchman,” featuring Chet Atkins-style guitar, a lively train beat and solo whistling. “Monkey Bars” moves to a good-time, soul-pop sound, highlighted by Jonah Devine Tarver’s riffing sax. The sax and thirst for travel return in “Long Gone,” a song that, stylistically, could be an homage to Van Morrison. “If there’s something you should say/You better say it now,” the blithe lyrics advise. “Before I’m gone./Long gone./That’s the name of the song.”
As The Rabbit half of the album winds down, some less expected music anticipates the double disc’s exploratory second half, The Owl. In a prog rock sphere though it is, The Owl is more analogous of Radiohead’s dreaminess and Chicago’s and Steely Dan’s pop-jazz than, for instance, the classical music-influenced classic rockers of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes.
“Naked Winter” includes droning chords, liberal reverb and much more of Tarver’s sax, an instrument that’s as much a voice on the album as singers Nick Huster and Ari Carter. “Desolate,” despite its pop-soul leanings, defies conventional song structure and genre-limitations. “Wolfchild” achieves reverie with meandering guitar and sax guitar melodies, encrusted vocal harmonies and first-person lyrics about mystic nights when “We lingered in the moonlight./We were wolves then, couldn’t slay our appetite.” “Villain,” the album’s trippy parting shot, is Mighty Brother’s most extreme journey into prog rock. The band sounds so comfortable here that maybe it should leave the crowded Americana field and go full-on wizards, dragons and warriors, becoming a 21st century Wishbone Ash or Uriah Heep. It worked for Game of Thrones.
