Spirit Animal

Behind the pervasive melancholy of singer/songwriter Steve Hefter’s music lurks a wry intelligence and a sharp eye for the telling details of everyday life. Spirit Animal is a quietly haunting collection presenting his concise, bittersweet tunes in sparse chamber-pop settings. Hefter brings years of experience with such cult combos as Sons of Buford and Challenge Club to this project—you can hear both the craftsmanship and honesty in his work. With its affecting mixture of whimsy and heartache, Spirit Animal invites comparisons to the likes of Stephin Merritt, Leonard Cohen, and Ray Davies. “Blinding Love,” “Cocksure,” and “Loneliness” are fine-etched folk/pop vignettes, rendered with guitar or piano accompaniment and accented with violin and trombone. Tasty arrangement touches—like the funeral-parlor organ on “The Piano Inflates” or the twitchy jazz tempo of “Kissi”—fill in the empty lyrical spaces. The waif-like vocals of Audie Darling and Ezra Rose (who duets with Hefter on “Long Distance Calls”) help break down the album’s sense of isolation, as does the choir featured on “This Is Not a Song.”