Denver emo band A Place for Owls last released a full-length album following what would count as a season of sadness, by any measure. Never hesitant to explore what’s real and never hiding behind characters or irony, they translated personal loss and shifting expectations into the emotionally direct, musically satisfying sound of how we dig in the earth, which lead singer Ben Sooy has described as a concept album about grief. Increasingly rare is the band that can combine heavy content with such lasting hooks. That blend, along with touches like gang vocals that implicitly suggest we’re all in this together, only seemed to expand the community of listeners and artists around the band.
That community forms the basis for the excellent new EP All Thieves, Vol. 1, which is distinguished by featuring guest artists on each track. A testament to building strength upon strength, All Thieves, Vol. 1 demonstrates the fruitfulness of collaborating with others, whether that looks like leaning on them or (more playfully rendered in the title) borrowing from them. Wisely calculating that going darker or deeper than how we dig in the earth might lead to diminishing returns or sustained gloom, A Place for Owls and their guests have prioritized spontaneity and trusting creative instincts rather than laboring unnecessarily.
Thus, while the EP is just as lyrically and thematically rich, unified even, as how we dig in the earth, there are more personalities and perspectives involved. To achieve this takes time, though, in the sense that such a community must be built and songwriting skills must be honed, in order for the first ideas to be the best ideas and for friends to play along so cohesively. Multi-instrumentalist Nick Webber recorded, mixed, and mastered the EP, also shaping how the songs and their sound fit within the musical identity the band has been developing.
There are some direct connections between the lyrics of how we dig in the earth and this new set of songs. For example, “The Seeds That I Planted”, featuring Gol Olímpico, calls back to words from “haunted”: “All the seeds that I planted / They aren’t there anymore.” The new song pushes further into a devotional or cosmically searching aim, directed to a divine audience.
“To Be Found,” a collaboration with phoneswithchords, with whom Sooy previously created 2023’s phoneswithBen, pleads to be seen by another, and whether that other is human or divine is open to interpretation. The song’s universal feeling shows in how it moves audiences hearing it live for the first time to tears.
Other highlights of the EP are songs written and sung by guitarist/banjoist Daniel Perez. “Too Far Gone” and its wordless epilogue, “(For Me to Reach You)”, remember a deceased friend, preserving the place the singer was when he received the news and acknowledging the unbridgeable distance that results. Ben Seretan‘s contributions to the songs sustain the otherworldly, searching quality that is otherwise verbally present in so many of the EP’s lyrics. “The Garden”, which features Adam Anglin, closes the EP with a final exploration of the contrast of solitude and companionship, this time in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Drummer Jesse Cowan and bassist Ryan Day, who also provides synth and lap steel here and there, are characteristically in the pocket, with Cowan’s energetic playing on “It Goes Around the Sun (feat. Flight Mode and Nathan K.)” providing a change of pace after the more ambient mode of “(For Me to Reach You)”.
There’s even a bit of sideways humor in “Son of Man”, for which Josaleigh Pollett, another artist having a most successful year, sings guest vocals. In this song, Sooy’s dream about a visit from Jesus plays out in mundane actions like making scones and watching bad television—actions made bizarre only by the guest’s presence. The song’s true function is to probe the difference between what one wants and the ideal knowledge of what one should want.
All Thieves, Vol. 1 offers many variations of what it is to be found, and sometimes that means acknowledging oneself as a human, with limits or shortcomings, and in need of friends to make it through.