Ned and Wendy the Band - Back Around Again ('Nother World)

In this wonderful age of technical wizardry and wonder, many artists make music together remotely, swapping files, sharing ideas, and honing songs without ever stepping in the same room. It happens all the time. Though few take it as far as Lindsey & Jordan Plotner, the people behind Ned and Wendy the Band.

So here we are, one band, two albums, a marriage, and an unexpected move to Portland later, and a third album from the self-branded glam-folk duo, Back Around Again, an album that captures the challenges of those fresh starts, new cities, of married life, and musical creativity, and which explores the concept of home, perfectly.

Opener “There’s a Man on The Corner (Who’s Writing An Opera)” reminds us that sometimes music can be made in the simplest of ways, and this a capella piece, complete with human-made clicks and claps, hums and, heavenly harmonies, a song that reminds me somewhat of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner,” the same street level observations, the same people watching lyrics, the same sparse and spacious approach.

From here, the album heads into more conventional but no less deftly wrought territory. The title track is a lush, dreamy, folkscape, “Walden” and “WNDR” are both more earnest folk pieces, both full of elemental and existential thoughts, and “This is What Life Is All About” is a song that spirals up brilliantly from humble sonic beginnings exploding in weight and wonder has it traverses its seven-minute crossing.

I still don’t know what glam-folk is, but if it is used to describe folk music full of the wildness of the outdoors and the lush infusions of more ambient, indie sonics, music which is full of wit and wisdom and wonder, acoustic music which seems not to know any generic confines or demarcations, music which is scintillating and shimmering, heaven-sent yet also be full of the scent of the fresh earth and the woodland trails, then this is surely it.

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