Birch Book begins and ends with an instrumental piece that seems to reference moments in a Satyajit Ray film: heavy rainfall on a lily pond, the burning of a mustard field, children playing in the dirt. One hears tablah, or what sounds like tablah, beneath faraway xylophone, guitar and harp, weaving together to lie against the eardrum with the warmth and delicacy of antique velvet.

Between these bookends, Birch Book proves a hauntingly lovely departure from the psych-folk nuances found on B'eirth's last album with In Gowan Ring: Hazel Steps Through a Weathered Home. Jew's harp and acoustic guitar set an upbeat, near toe-tapping rhythm on "How the Hours," yet B'eirth's solemn vocals transcend and transform this rhythm a few shades dimmer, snaking their way through multi-tracked harmonies. At once deep and restrained, with a subtle, lilting quality, his voice, and the poetry riding aloft on it, pervade warmly over forays into other moods and genres. Through the dust and tumbleweeds of "Eglantine" and "Five Hundred Keys," the vaguely Leonard Cohen-styled sadness of "Train to Rome," and "Sleepless Search," and the hymn-like "Warm Wind and Rain," the album's overall tone steadies itself within the realm of the wistful and hushed.

Only the odd, "Coffee Morning" begs to wander furthest from this realm. Sounding as if it were arranged by a prairie-kept Andrew Lloyd Weber, it is of course punctuated by the requisite tenor aside: "What was it like hung in mid-flight caught on the full moon's glare/ the turn you hear on gilded ears, the worlds you wish you shared." Such opulent, effusive lyrics, worthy of the Phantom himself, are fortunate to be coupled with a sweet and simple instrumental arrangement; narrowly avoiding gratuitous sentimentality. Fans of Mojave Three, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Iron and Wine would do well to bend their ears to this album, anticipating more beauty to come.

-Leslie Ann Henkel for North East Performer