Album Premiere: Lowland Hum, Native Air

Feeling peckish? Check your local listings and see if Lowland Hum is playing a show near you. Word on the street is that North Carolina-based folk duo has been handing out free bread and handmade lyric booklets at each gig. (For the record, we’d recommend staying clear of the booklets unless you’re seriously starving — but go nuts on the baguettes.)

It’s all part of the band’s desire to create “multi-sensory experience.” At the end of the day, though, Lowland Hum keeps most of the focus on the band’s music, which sticks close to the poppy, paired-down folk sound that KaiserCartel once made. Bandmates Daniel and Lauren Plank first met when Daniel was working on a solo album, and what began as a quick series of vocal overdubs — with Lauren singing on four of Daniel’s tracks — quickly blossomed into something bigger. The couple married not too long after that, and Native Air — their self-produced debut, which hits stores next week — traces their path from past to present.

“Although Lauren and I have been working together on different music and art for a few years now,” says Daniel, “Native Air is our first fully collaborative project.  The songs come primarily from what has inspired, challenged and disturbed us in the first year and half of our marriage.  The processes of both writing and recording this album together have been some of the most enlivening and shaping experiences of my life to date.”