I began this blog with a review of The Oh Hellos' last album, Eurus, having no idea that another album was just around the corner. Boreas, the third album in a four-part series based on the Greek wind gods, was released with a quiet delicacy that matches its music. To feel the full scope of the composition, I decided to start at the beginning of The Oh Hellos' work and listen to all of their albums straight through to Boreas. I’m so glad I did. Their first self-titled EP was full of raw talent and vulnerability, and over the years their lyrics and music have only grown more mature, more complex, and more surprising. When I listened to the first notes of Boreas, there was only one word to describe that moment: I was enraptured.
The last song of Eurus, their previous album, finishes with the line “When the cold wind blows in, oh my lord, what am I to do, what am I to do, oh lord?” Boreas answers that question. It begins with one of The Oh Hellos’ signature non-vocal pieces, an intriguing piece called “A Kindling, Of Sorts” that starts with strange instrumental sounds and eventually grows into a new, sweeping twist on a song from Notos, “Torches”.
This instrumental piece transitions into the song “Cold”, and it is in this song that it becomes clear just how much The Oh Hellos have grown since their last album. Maggie and Tyler’s voices skip across the notes, calling to mind the image of snowflakes landing softly on the ground, before segueing into a series of haunting “oohs” and the hint of a violin solo that calls back to “Passerine” from the Eurus album. The song describes the coldness a person feels as they contemplate the wealth they hold and the price they must pay to pass into the afterlife. In the end, they confess, “I’m not quite ready to turn to bone,” yet they also realize that “this ossified philosophizing’s getting old.” The music cuts off abruptly, the singer realizing that the bountiful harvest of Eurus’s autumn is gone, but they’re not ready for the death of winter.
The next song, “Lapis Lazuli”, is the fastest song of the album, and the most familiar-sounding to fans of The Oh Hellos’ earlier albums. The harmonies and lyrics continue to push the envelope, though. As the singer contemplates telling a truth that doesn’t want to be heard and will soon be forgotten, they recall how “the sky looked white and the water like wine when I first met you. But somewhere along the line Rayleigh scattered across my eye and I found her blue.” This could be an allusion to the fact that the Ancient Greek language had no word for blue, and also ties back into the singer’s search for truth. In the end, they wonder “Behind my color blindness, what did I miss?” The music trails off as the singer continues to contemplate the truths they’ve discovered.
“Rose” returns to themes in The Oh Hellos earlier albums of religion and how to untangle it from hypocrisy. They play with Shakespeare’s line of “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” as the singer wonders at what point confusing a message of love with a message of violence turns a person away from true faith. It’s an important lesson to remember in an era of such fear and misinformation that “I think we got a lot we gotta learn.”
The next piece is another musical interlude. “Smoke Rising Like Lifting Hands” is perhaps the simplest and yet most complex of these interludes. It contains notes from the first interlude of the album, yet here they stand on their own, bared to the listener as they repeat and swell and eventually fall into the titular song of the album, “Boreas”. The quietest and least hopeful of the album’s songs, the singer is at the end of the line. While many of The Oh Hellos’ songs deal with myth, religion, and fantasy, this song is surprisingly mundane in its setting. The singer observes “the ceiling fan turn its shape again” from “the cold linoleum”. The singer has realized the cycle they’re stuck in, one that’s referred to repeatedly throughout the albums. The singer thinks about “setting the ends of my hair on fire. If I’m kindling for a little while, at least I’d feel of use.” The singer imagines themself to be fire, sweeping across a forest floor and rejuvenating the soil. For the rest of the song, the singer alternates between dreaming of breaking through the winter as a wildfire and feeling stuck in the oppressive mundanity of their life. In the end, though, the singer wonders if the cycle they feel stuck in could be transformed from one of depression, fear, and hatred to one of warmth and hope: “Promise me that you’ll start where I end, and I promise to give you everything that I am….In the end all I hope for is to be a bit of warmth for you, when there’s not a lot of warmth left to go around.” The singer is ready to give themself over for a better future.
The final song, “Glowing”, is a direct response to the previous one, as can be seen in the contrasting vocals of Maggie and Tyler, the lead singers. In “Glowing”, the singer suggests that the end is not the end, even if it feels like it because “you can’t find an edge by a map half-written”. The singer acknowledges that there are no more prophecies, no more maps, to guide us through life. Bad decisions that we and others have made weigh over us and could crush us at any time. But a sweeping musical bridge leads into the singer reminding the listener of being “a babe tugging at houseplants: all on your own, honest and truly.” This simple image grounds the song in the wonder that a child holds for the world. The singer lifts the listener up, both through words and through music, and leaves them with the reassurance that “it would feel like rebirth out of some kind of dying to see yourself so glowing.” The soft utterance of this last word closes out the album, leaving the listener with a taste of what’s to come: rebirth. Spring. Hope.
To answer the question posed at the end of Eurus, when the cold wind blows in, it’s important to remember that cycles don’t only perpetuate the worst in us—they can also be an opportunity for growth, as painful as that growth may be. There’s something about this that breaks the 4th wall when one contemplates the overall trajectory of The Oh Hellos’ music thus far. They have never lost their roots in folk music, myth, and religious contemplation, yet each album rises stronger than the one before it. A cycle, but also a rebirth. I already can’t wait to see how this series will conclude with the final album.
You can learn more about The Oh Hellos and buy all of their albums on their website.