Artist: Zephuros

Artist: Zephuros

Links: https://www.facebook.com/zephurosmusic

http://zephuros.bandcamp.com/

Kevin Meyer songs feature intimate vocals perfectly cradled by spare instrumentation, all of which has Meyer inviting favorable comparison to Sufjan Stevens. Look no further than Kickstarter-named album-opener, "Silhouette." Its acoustic guitar and xylophone support the lush vocals, "look away my darlings / I don't want you to catch / their poison" -- the lyrical "poison" beautifully rendered on repeat.

Meyer classifies his Zephuros project as nature folk, but it is one that works best outside the animal kingdom. I don't agree with The Shins that caring is necessarily creepy, but microscopic looks at the animal kingdom can be a bit off-putting. Even Joanna Newsom's 9.5-minute "Monkey and Bear" was less description-based, and might not have worked without Newsom's bouncy harp and bizarre/beloved Bjork-like vocal.

It is Zephuros' album-closer, "North Star," that is the exemplar of nature folk, and is closer akin to Laura Veirs than Newsom. The track is proof that, with the right subject matter, Meyer is a poet of considerable skill: "tall black waves rip / and toss our broken ship / swirling clouds cover our heads / like a blanket from the bed / on the ocean way out far / we rely on the north star." Perhaps Zephuros' interests are idiosyncratic, but Kevin Meyer's musical performance is all natural beauty.

*** The author of this review, Norman Marshall, plays the tamboril for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8