The Hill And Wood, a group of singers and players from Charlottesville, Virginia led by lead singer Sam Bush, is sure to make you feel something. They'll make you lighter. They'll brighten whatever you'd like brightened. They'll offer to top off your beverage even before you recognize that you're running low and soon to be all dried up. They'll fetch the ice to put on your bump. They'll massage out your knots and they'll do it all for nothing. You don't owe them a thing. They stir you greatly, making the room you're in while listening to this right now feel like a scenic picture of a countryside that gets tagged as #fieldporn when it's uploaded to Instagram. It's serenity and it's a potluck. It feels like a gathering of old friends who give the best hugs, as well as the following:
-- A new litter of kittens that have just opened their eyes.
-- The first cup of coffee in the morning.
-- That red and orange and pink sky at dusk that, while the odds of seeing it shouldn't be so slim, feels as if it's spotted but once or twice a year and just marveled at.
-- The smell of fresh-cut grass, but more specifically after you yourself have labored to cut it and you're sitting on the porch with a beer, rocking just post-dinnertime, as the locusts are just jumping into the first verse of many.
-- It's hot pie in the kitchen and it's the aroma of it wafting through every single room of the house - the sweetest annoyance and the greatest distraction. You will get some of that pie, but you must wait.
-- They are the feelings in the stands on a Friday night, at a high school football game, when you couldn't care who wins on the perfect, crisp night or those at a wedding, when you know it's going to last.
-- Warnings, visions and prayers