The album closes on a two-minute song, “Grave Robbers.” It’s a little unfair to jump straight to this track, since the album holds it off while building up to it. Love and death show up in every song, but this one treats the latter with an address straight to the listener. “Change your way of limping/ around the world./ ‘Cause you know what will come soon?/ A real broken leg.” Because time is short you had better not mope through it. You thought life gave you something to cry about? What about being dead?

The song progresses, a male/female duet accompanied by an acoustic guitar. The lyrics state the truth that death comes, inevitable for everyone. Phil Elverum (who is Mount Eerie, and used to be The Microphones) returns to images of ghosts stuck where they are. The “Grave Robbers” title recalls the idea that we, as matter, all recycle each other, reuse the stuff that once made the dead. Even though it’s honest, it’s morbid. Nothing so far justifies the song, or justifies my singling it out here. Though evocative and well-stated, the bulk of the song sets up the turn at the end. “Our bones do blow away,” Elverum sings, “in pink light.” For “in pink light” Julie Doiron, the female vocal on the record, drops out, and leaves Elverum alone to sing just those three words. The song ends right there.

The last line doesn’t overcome the morbidity of the previous lines, but it does propose some tension with them. The sentiment as I read it becomes, “Death in this world is strange.” Though we die and become dust, this happens in a context that might sometimes be as saccharine, or as beautiful, as “pink light.” An album that concerns itself with the mystery of human life and death as much as this one does, rightly catches our attention with the sudden entrance of light in the end. Even though death is the way of things, inescapably the way of things, it still stands in contrast to so much of what we see around us in the world and in life. Death seems unnatural here.

Why is that?

Mount Eerie – Grave Robbers mp3

The Kids is Turner’s post-college “self-improvement project,” started in 2005 by Turner + Girl.The band evolved into Turner’s baby as time passed and feelings changed. Derek (bass) and Erin (glockenspiel, drums, bass, vocals) came along after meeting Turner at Evergreen College in Olympia, WA, the Kids’ hometown.

Sundance Kids plays hybrid country because those are their roots; they’re hybrid because they quit country/folk for pop a couple of years back. They’re twee because, well, why not? “The original idea of the project was play really cute twee-country songs, the kind that would make people chuckle and giggle and say ‘awww!’,” Turner explains. Gradually the country advanced into twee with more pop-appeal.

Like in all good westerns, Sundance Kids is travelling westward; this is their 3rd tour of the northwest and they are thrilled to be back in Moscow. “There’s a Co-Op, the country is beautiful, the Palouse is just lovely,” says Turner; he continues: “We’re really excited to play with Yarn Owl, our friends from Pullman.”

Bring your sweetheart to hear Sundance Kids and Yarn Owl at the Nuart Theatre in downtown Moscow (516 S. Main Street) on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2008, at 8:00 p.m., $5 at the door.  ~xox, molly miltenberger

Molly is a freelance journalist and a senior at New St. Andrew’s College with a special interest in music, postcards, and goldfish.  She is an intern at The Loop 21 and keeps the blog A New Amsterdam.