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Woodpigeon is more than just the most beautiful word in the English language, although that’s precisely why it was chosen by songwriter Mark Hamilton as the moniker for his pretty-pretty-pop project. Encompassing a kind of ersatz collective orchestra, dispersed across a couple continents, rising and falling in number with the demands of song life and real life, Woodpigeon creates music much the same way a bowerbird crafts a lovenest: the right space is chosen and the bower goes up twig by twig, berry by berry, embellishing a basic construction that’s already sound and lovely.

Occasionally, when all goes well, a mate is attracted.

Woodpigeon's preferred habitat is slightly spooky places (friendly ghosts only) with natural reverb, with nearby vintage mellotrons and echoing stairwells, and perhaps a gaggle of singing children when feeling maudlin. They rock out on harpsichords and wrench tears out of guitars before playing them damp. Bells, whistles, handclaps – all the aural tchotchkes are enlisted to serve the song, wherever they can brighten a melody or limn a mournful line. Girlish voices become instruments, while Mark's lonely choirboy vocals – somehow, impossibly, lodged in a lumberjack-ish bear of a man – sound uncannily like they’re being sung directly into your ear. You can almost feel his warm minty breath.

Mark mostly sings about the Unbearable Mark-ness of Being: secret love ninjas, imaginary segregated private schools, stolen kisses, confounded passion, windy days and city streets, thoughtful walking, the kind of longing that is wonderful, and the kind of longing that is sorrowful. He pushes aside the fabric of reality to create a fantastic musical realm where truth is found in fiction, and fiction is found in song.

Long live music. Long live Woodpigeon.

FOR REALSIES Every last word is true. Some bare facts: founded in the autumn of 2005 by crazily prolific lapsed filmmaker Mark Hamilton. Recordings so far: 1 rock opera about pirates, 3 full-lengths recorded, 1 full-length released, 4 EPs recorded, 2 EPs released. Sharings of the music: countless live shows, 1 appearance each at NXNE, SXSW, End of the Road, and Sled Island (which Mark also curated).

SECRET WEAPONS Cordiality, evasion, argyle, fanciful thoughts, deadly metaphor-to-metaphor judo.

PHILOSOPHY Everything starts off as a rock opera.

OTHER PHILOSOPHY Girl voices are instruments. Boy voices are sex objects.

FILE UNDER Deliciously wistful analog pop; a-few-strings-short-of-orchestral pop; folk's pretty little sister who skipped a few grades and makes out with rock at parties, the sound of twinkling stars and moonbeams.

ADD TO A PLAYLIST WITH The holy trinity of 'Cameras' (Hidden Cameras, Aztec Camera, Camera Obscura), Beirut, Vashti Bunyan, The Decemberists, Donovan, Grizzly Bear, early Belle & Sebastian, The Acorn, Echo & The Bunnymen.

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and now: 10 things you should know.

1. hey! hey you! take a listen to woodpigeon performing live, and then keep your eyes peeled for when we're in your part of the world:

CBC Radio 3 In-Session, recorded live at The Hive in Vancouver.

CBC Radio 2 Combo To Go, recorded live at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, alongside our friends the Voicescapes vocal ensemble.

CBC Radio 1 Fuse in collaboration with Jay Crocker.

2. FREE!- EP! Written in Paris, Berlin and Edinburgh, Houndstooth is a sweet, minimalist, short-player from Woodpigeon that we think you are going to love. It was recorded with Jane Vain* and she lends her voice to a few tracks too!

Here it is:

01. in praise of the west midlothian bus service
02. oberkampf
03. potsdamer platz (stomp, stomp, stomp)
04. ladybug ladybird (home demo)
05. the return bus ride home
06. thoughts on the one who got away by the one he left behind

* track 4 recorded by mark at home / track 6 recorded by aaron booth, who also sings.

and here's a grand review of it from FFWD magazine:

Moving away from blissed-out orchestral pop to quiet and refined folk, Woodpigeon raises the stakes on Houndstooth. The six-song EP is a departure for the band – moving from big and complex to small and more intimate. The first two tracks in particular ("In Praise of the West Midlothian Bus Service" and "Oberkampf"), showcase strong, deliberate vocals and effective harmonies and meld hymnal-like swells to create these modern lullabies. Recorded beautifully by another local favourite, Jane Vain, the band has never sounded more crystalline or precise. Track six, recorded by Aaron Booth, emphasizes the band’s confidence in the new material and showcases the lyrics and intricate acoustics – allowing the song to build and retreat effortlessly. By shedding the bells and whistles (literally), Woodpigeon allows the listener to hear its growth in every plucked string. By keeping things simple and stripping down its sound, the band has managed to show on Houndstooth that big things really do come in small packages. 4/5 -- KIRSTEN KOSLOSKI

3. and then: SONGBOOK, our debut album, is out now! drop us a line and we'll hook you up, or visit lirico if you're in japan. it's coming out (with a bonus cd!) in the uk and europe via end of the road records later this year too! click the links to go straight to their respective sites, or order it through your local record dealers. alternately, we're also hip with the

4. here's a nice review of the album from NOW MAGAZINE out of toronto:

WOODPIGEON
Songbook
NNNN - CRITIC'S PICK

Like Calgary's answer to Sufjan Stevens and his travelling symphonic circus, prairie collective Woodpigeon have a penchant for long-winded song titles (Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always And Forever) and jingly, ramshackle chamber-folk concoctions driven by banjo, glockenspiel, a sprawling choir and quivering male vocals. Though there are sonic similarities, the writing on Songbook suggests repressed longing and romantic fantasies rather than Stevens's hyper-detailed short story narratives, but Mark Hamilton's delightfully whimsical metaphors and imagery (a love song about ninjas! Superheroes sacrificing good deeds for love!) work perfectly in tandem with Woodpigeon's shimmery songs. And though the music works well in watercolour shades, when the loose-knit ensemble puts some muscle into rocking out, as on the driving Jonathan Ashworth Rollercoaster, they make a strong case for why Woodpigeon might be the next great Canadian breakout band. -- SARAH LISS

and another from THE EDMONTON JOURNAL:

woodpigeon, led by Calgary musician/journalist Mark Hamilton, creates lush, romantic music that combines bright, delicious pop with gorgeous echoey harmonies and oddball orchestrations including some lovely guitar, banjo, shambling drums, a glockenspiel, piano, melodica and horns. But, it's not nearly as unbearablly twee as you might imagine. Comparisons with Belle and Sebastian are fair, but with less Little Lord Fauntelroy and more of W.O Mitchell's dark innocence. With tracks like 'home as a romanticized concept were everyone loves you always and forever', and 'a sad country ballad for a tired superhero', it's like you're listening to a prarie city's inner monologues. 4/5 -- MARY SASANO

aw. shucks...

5. this spring, for our lucky friends in the uk and europe, the end of the road records shall be re-releasing Songbook this spring with the first installment in our series of odds-'n-sodds eps, Treasury Library 1: Dewey Does It:

01. in the battle of sun vs. curtains, sun loses and we sleep until noon
02. i live a lot of places
03. 7th fret over andres
04. a moment's peace for mary christa o'keefe
05. anna, girl in the clocktower
06. bad news brown

6. Songbook UK shall also be accompanied by a limited edition 7" single, featuring our mates the neighbourhood council helping us out on the b-side:

A. that was good but you can do better
B. knock knock

7. here's a video from our cd release show at the engineered air theatre in calgary on 28 october 2006 (visuals by our friend joe kelly). the song's called my denial in argyle.:

and look! another one live from cityTv, from 31 december 2007 (that's our producer arran fisher on the clarinet). this song's called spire-house.:

8. finally, cameron chapman of the haritoshan film ministry has been making a documentary on us since the very beginning – during the recording of our album SONGBOOK, live shows and events, and even capturing the entire 2007 mini-tour of the UK on camera. here's an early glimpse of it - a live performance of 'songbook' the song...

9. we're also all about the side projects. if you like what you're hearing, you might also like SPREEPARK, PIGEONBOOTH, and/or THE BRENDA VAQUEROS. we sure do and it's kind of like an inner-band race to see who can make the most albums.

10. i think that's about it, really.