This thought doesn't come to me just any old day. It does come to me on days when I put the needle down on Peter Wolf Crier's debut record, "Inter-Be," and let its contents ease on out of the speakers. It is random and inconsistent with everything, for it's preposterous, but a thought nonetheless. What the Minneapolis duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen make me want to do is they make me want to buy an old and vacant church, some beautiful and even holy structure that still contains the echoes of old prayers and faith. I could have my own chapel, my own sanctuary - a place of real worship - and I would offer it up as a place where they could live, forever, for free, just so long as they kept the stain-glassed air occupied with whatever came next out of their amplifiers, mouths and drum kit. It seems like an appropriate place to feel the music that these two write and provide, the layered and looped vocals spiraling out of Pisano like a flock of pretty and patient sparrows. It's music that reaffirms you, that steadies you in your skin and in your bones - music that can heal you once and for all. It seems that such a thing belongs in a dedicated environment where it can hold onto its proper sanctity, where it can be protected.
Peter Wolf Crier's music is like skipping stones and stealing kisses - stealing the best kisses - and enjoying home cooking every day of your life even if you're never home. It's a land that's somewhat heavenly, as if we're already reunited with all of the people we've ever loved in our past and present, without having had to feel what it's actually like to lose our life or see the same happen to all of those many loved ones. "Inter-Be" is sort of like a cross between feeling like you could burst with your own, newly formed kind of sunlight, running for the hills directly from your eyes, mouth and nostrils and being able to see everyone you care about in their moments of purest love and with all of life still before them. It's like existing with your parents, back when they were still in love with each other, young and so goddamn in love, looking at each other the way happy hearts temporarily force people to look at one another - with hope and earnestness and the belief that this love will prove to be different, an exception to rules and statistics.
Pisano and Moen touch on the emotions that come with understanding that this thing that we're all caught up in, that we often lose all of our sight for, is not a dress rehearsal. It is very final and it is very short and when Pisano sings, "For right now, you have my breath," it's as if we're given a bittersweet reminder that we all will be gone soon enough and a little breath given, or a little meaningfulness in every single touch or smile should be clutched and pressed into a beloved memory. It should be devoured and it should be kept in one's body undigested. It's a reminder that time is sparkling and it is only borrowed, though we are free to steal much of it - or the imprints of it - for our own private property, as often and we can, with the thought that such an act might buoy us.