By Petyr Campos
Searows, the project of Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter and guitarist Alec Duckart, performed two sold out shows at the Independent this week. Searows is touring to promote his second and latest album Death in the Business of Whaling. The new album was recorded in an isolated barn in the Pacific Northwest and produced by Trevor Spencer (Beach House, Father John Misty). The 26-year-old Portland singer-songwriter has been quietly accumulating for the past few years the ability to make a sold-out room behave like a library reading hour, which is meant as a compliment. There is a particular kind of quiet that descends over a crowd when the music is working. His music is not built for arenas. It is music built for the space between people, for the silence inside a crowded room.
Searows has the quiet confidence of someone who has learned that understatement is its own kind of power. He doesn’t talk much between songs; however, when he does, it’s a sincere and brief self-deprecating mumbled “thank you for coming.” Searow’s voice feels ghostly, fragile, intimate, and vast all at once. The songs were melodic and unhurried, creating a textured classic shoegaze atmosphere. Duckart writes the way a good poet writes, reaching for the specific image that unlocks something universal. More than once, the woman standing to my left closed her eyes and didn’t open them for the length of a full song. More than once, I noticed others doing the same. It was a genuine, vulnerable, and unguarded performance. Searows is still early in his career, still building a catalog, still figuring out the full shape of what he wants to say. But on this night, in this room, it was easy to believe he will be one of the artists people return to for years, the voice they put on at the end of a hard day, the sound that makes them feel less alone.
New York-based and Buenos Aires-born, folk singer-songwriter Mori was the opening act and is on her first tour. Mori is known for lyric-driven storytelling and unflinching emotional honesty. Between language learning and an early-found love for music, writing bridged her cultural worlds and gave voice to apologies and explanations left unsaid. Inspired by the likes of Searows, Lizzy McAlpine, and Olivia Dean, she crafts intentional, lyrically-meaty music, which still manages to be easy on the ears via feeling-first production.
