The Finches

By Andrew Kersey

Photo by Matt Sartain

The past year and a half has been “encouraging” for Aaron Morgan, one half of San Francisco-based acoustic duo The Finches. It’s easy to understand why. Since the self-release of their Six Songs EP in the summer of 2005, he and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs have sold over 1,200 copies without any distribution, and their debut full-length, Human Like A House, which was just released in late January, is certain to provide ample encouragement still. The two play a lighter, less genre-driven brand of folk that would sit happily cross-legged alongside Francoise Hardy’s diaphanous gems and Moe Tucker’s end-of-album ditties for The Velvets.

“We just played a 17-year-old’s birthday party this weekend!” beams Pennypacker Riggs from behind her oversized mug of green tea. “I think it was our best show ever because, when is music ever so poignant as in high school? I was thinking that should be our new direction: weddings and parties. Everyone’s happy, you know?”

Such buoyant affirmations are completely in line with the band’s musical character, yet equivocally so. Less monochrome than their EP, the new album is deceptively whimsical. “When I first started playing with Carolyn,” Morgan offers, speaking of their early days together as students at UC Santa Cruz, “I thought ‘My god, these songs are perfectly sad, yet happy; or happy, yet sad.’ Those have always been my favorite kinds of songs.”

This happy-sad exchange serves The Finches well, suffusing their music with a bittersweet hue, somewhat akin to crying while skipping. Setting such a tone in “O LA,” Pennypacker Riggs imagines, “We’ll hang our heads like daffodils,” and steers a course for the strummed and finger-picked melodies with a voice as vitreous and susceptible as a dewdrop. Her vocal prowess is such that even words like “mobile phone” become emotionally charged. And, in a day when most indie female singers strive to angle their voices into either a labored lilt or an ironic sneer, her unadorned delivery is completely disarming in its honesty and natural beauty. “I think I’m just getting used to writing songs,” she says. “Those [EP] songs are literally the first ones I wrote. I didn’t know how to be concise.” And, accounting for the new album’s more cursive quality, Pennypacker Riggs explains, “I think it’s also that I’m able to play faster now. Just technically, I can fingerpick faster than when I started.”

With each of them living on opposite sides of the Bay, being such a bare-boned outfit has its advantages for The Finches. Morgan reckons, “It’s definitely very easy to get together and work on songs with just our voices and acoustic guitars. I think that’s how [the band] happened, just because we can practice in each other’s bedrooms. It’s great for touring, too; everything’s carry-on.”

The two are planning for three mini-tours at the start of the new year, with California, the East Coast and the Southwest each receiving individual attention. Pennypacker Riggs, who spent a semester in Goettingen, Germany (“Lonely and cold in a foreign land. … Every song I write is about that feeling”), as well as six months living in Berlin playing solo shows around town, considers herself “travel-crazy.” She foresees a future touring schedule of “many shows here and abroad, and perhaps even on vessels in between (boats? Chunnels? Zeppelins?!).”

So far, the band has an irresistible résumé of help. Their album is truly a family affair, with both members’ mothers providing backing vocals, Morgan’s dad adding luster from his pedal steel, and Susan Riggs, Carolyn’s mother, stepping in with a recorder for “The House Under the Hill.” In addition, Vetiver’s Alissa Anderson adds cello on the twinkling “Two Ghosts.” Complete with 12 of Pennypacker Riggs’ exquisite woodcut drawings gracing the CD’s generous packaging, Human Like A House is a genuine treasure trove of The Finches’ gifted handiwork. Discover them like a new route home.

www.finchesmusic.com