Common Wealth is Bird By Snow’s 4th LP, and their 1st record made outside of their own lo-fi home studio. But Bird By Snow stays true to their analog roots by conducting ceremony with tape alchemist Tim Green who recorded and produced this album and has cast countless other magic spells with artists such as Joanna Newsom, Daniel Higgs, Wolves in the Throne Room, and a multitude more.

Common Wealth is a watershed of song, an album of arrangements that behave more like an ecosystem. The interdependence of the instruments that dwell in the wilds of this record give the impression that the sounds here create themselves and all other sounds simultaneously. 

This album begins when a shaker wakes in the darkness, the first sign of approaching warmth, like spring thaw on a frozen river. The icy shaker that floats on the water is joined by skin drums resounding from the hillside, and by pump-organs migrating over-head with geese. The cirrus clouds are spectral piano trills; the marching cumulous clouds, piano bass-lines. Steel drums, autoharps, vibraphones and dulcimers burst suddenly from under rocks like crawfish. Voices high and mellow dance on the surface of the water with flecks of sunlight. The boulders churning in the deepest pools are the bass, the cymbals, and a thundering gong. And the flow of the river itself, the invisible energy, is guitars, electric and nylon. This river flows between an ancient glacier and a vast ocean. The mind glacier melts into poetry, lyrics that travel with those sound sediments back to the source: the endless ocean of gratitude, and openness. 

SAMPLE TRACKS

TRACK LIST

SIDE A:  1. Wobbly Legs 2. Friends in the City 3. One White Flag 

SIDE B:  1. There is a Marriage 2. As we are now 3. Without Reaching 4. Across the Water

MORE ABOUT THIS RELEASE

LP:  140-gram white vinyl, with a beautifully printed reverse-board jacket, an 8-page color 10" booklet, and a digital download.

CD: The CD version comes housed in an LP-style, gatefold, matte, all-cardboard jacket. Beautifully printed, great sounding.

SELECT PRESS

“Something really special... rich, moody songs with an astonishing depth.” – The Bay Bridged

“The vocals sound round and full, like being surrounded by a blanket and then the blanket turns out to actually be some dude’s voice. Which actually, if you really think about it hard, is kind of nightmarish… so maybe don’t think about it that hard. This voice paired with tip-toeing guitar lines and the soft hiss of empty space is basically what it feels like to hole up in a warm wood cabin for awhile.” – The Fader

"Bird By Snow was born in the air between beach fires, big skies, and long-shuttered winter cabins. Let the ‘good flow’ flow with two headily vocaled, woodsy folk tunes harvested from Common Wealth, the new mystical drifter LP available for frost-bitten sleepovers and long, winding walks now." – RCRD LBL

"This is music as natural as sunshine, rolling off his strings and keys like rain off a slick surface." 9 out of 10 – No Ripcord

"Soft and mystical, Bird By Snow have been making dreamy folk pop with psych-ish elements for the past few years... perfectly marrying strong songwriting with an elegant ambiance of needlepoint guitar work, spacious drumming and pretty female backing vocals. A perfect record to cozy up to a fire in the dark winter months." – Aquarius Records

"Common Wealth's strongest quality lies in its inability to be pinned down; Tucker's work is now something that resists easy summary -- one can hear everything from understated folk antecedents to fraught metal extremes to shadowed goth touches throughout its seven songs, but at no point is it simply one of those approaches, or any other one, for that matter." – AllMusic