Humbird

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Wolfskull Creative

Humbird

media release: Please join Humbird on Friday, April 28, when they perform live with full band at The Stoughton Opera House.

Rounding out the Midwest run of performance dates – Humbird will be performing at at the spring installment of the 2023 Midwest Music Fest on May 13 in  Winona.

Lead singer-songwriter Siri Undlin is joined by bassist Pat Keen and drummer Peter Quirsfeld, and multi-instrumentalist Adelyn Strei, all of whom played on the critically acclaimed Still Life, released in 2021.

The unique band arrangements emphasize Siri Undlin’s songcraft and guitar playing, both of which are essential elements of Still Life songs like “Pink Moon for John Prine” and “Standing in the Way.” The hit single “Plum Sky” received accolades from Minnesota Public Radio’s, The Current as one of the top songs of 2021, as well as the full length album, Still Life  coming in at The Current’s #2 Album of the Year spot. 

With acclaim from No Depression, Folk Alley and Americana Highways for Siri Undlin’s adventurous and innovative songwriting, Still Life, released in October 2021, represents a major advance in Humbird’s career, coming just after their 2019 debut full-length Pharmakon. That album also garnered rave reviews from writers and fans, and Humbird won the 2021 Kerrville Folk Festival’s songwriting award. 

The sonic palette of the band was expanded on Still Life, with hints of ‘70s-style progressive rock, classical music and folk adding extra dimensions to Siri Undlin’s songs. What you hear on Still Life are the imaginative sonics, certainly. The concept of Still Life comes out of the summer of 2020, when the pandemic—and the murder of George Floyd in her Minneapolis neighborhood—led her to look inward. Recorded with Adelyn Strei at the Minneapolis house she shared with Siri, Still Life is an album that offers solutions to problems of insularity. 

Celebrating its musical arrangments and superb instrumentation, Humbird released the "Still Life Instrumentals EP" on December 16, 2022. Three songs from the Still Life catalog were selected – “May,” “Heavy,” and “Stone Giant.” Talking about Still Life Instrumentals, Siri Undlin said, “Personally, I’ve been listening to more and more ambient, experimental, lyric-less music and have found it to be a comfort amidst the chaos, movement, and the broken systems we’re all striving to navigate or reimagine and build. Often, we need words. Sometimes, we don’t. This little EP is for those latter times, should you find yourself in one.” 

With a passionate dedication for live performance, Siri Undlin took the Humbird songs on her well-received summer 2022 tour of the U.K. and Ireland, where she performed in major cities and seaside villages as part of a double bill with fellow Minneapolis singer-songwriter Luke Callen. As she told The Current about the tour: “I personally think it’s really important to do both large and small cities and to offer up art and collaboration in different contexts. And I think the kind of music that I make and the person that I am and my background makes me able to do both.” 

Folk Radio UK writes, “You can’t deny the rich experiences and young wisdom that helped find these words… both beautiful and a reminder of the part we all play in determining our fate.” 

The current Humbird Spring Tour 2023 marks the rise of a major songwriter, and the year since the release of the acclaimed Still Life album – has seen Humbird’s music reach new audiences. The tour will feature Siri Undlin in a duo band context, as well as the familiar trio and quartet where her expert—and harmonically sophisticated—guitar playing interacts with the intuitive work of Peter Quirsfield and Pat Keen’s rhythm section. As Pharmakon and Still Life demonstrate, Humbird is deeply invested in record-making—creating innovative textures. Taken as a superb singer-songwriter who also knows how to lead a band, Siri Undlin shines as a creator of songs that have heart, soul and subtle magic. 

Like one of her inspirations, John Prine—the great post-folk songwriter is the presence behind “Pink Moon for John Prine”—Siri revels in the quotidian details of everyday life. Still Life is about how the curves and edges of real life can’t be found on a flat map, and this image of a map underpins “Standing in the Way.” 

Siri Undlin has the kind of grounding in songwriting and music-making that comes from her combined experiences. Like so many talented songwriters and performers, she believes in the power of communication a live audience gives her. Her deep roots go back to her formative years in Minneapolis, where she learned to play traditional folk tunes and the rock, pop and folk of the past and present. 

Siri Undlin works in the timeless space of folk music. But she’s a thoroughly modern songwriter, influenced by Big Thief, Joni Mitchell, John Prine. Her chords are, in the end, her own, and you get satisfaction from her sheer harmonic ingenuity. The songs are personal narratives framed in the language of advanced pop. Humbird is a band with a real, worked-out style of its own, and that style comes through in the studio and onstage. Like the great songwriters who have informed her art, Siri has created a universe—a method of walking through the world—in her songcraft. That’s what it comes down to, when all is said and done. 

Siri spoke with Americana Highways recently about the upcoming tour: “I like to think of me and my bandmates as a very scrappy, grounded ensemble from the Midwest. We show up and work hard. We believe in what we’re doing. So I think the attention is really nice, and really strange, and hopefully, it keeps going.” 

“Siri Undlin’s crystalline voice is thoroughly enchanting... an absolutely hypnotic listening experience.” – Folk Alley 

“Sounds with the idiosyncrasies of folk and Americana music wrapped in a gentle rebellion.” – Atwood Magazine