However, while the album is united by a certain mellowness, to label it one-paced would be to do it a disservice. Opener ‘Beautiful, OH’ is a sparse, elegiac number underpinned by the gentlest swells, the cyclical pattern interspersed with irregular rises in tempo which never quite culminate in anything like a climax, playing like time passing across a landscape. This is followed by ‘The Carter Starter’, a track positively chirpy in comparison, though violin still sweeps across at various interludes to add a wistful dimension. ‘Still New To This’ creeps out of its beginnings with a playful edge. The cyclical motif utilised once more, though each iteration is altered and built upon so that a sense of organic life is imparted to the flow.

As highlighted in the next three tracks, much of Tiny Houses is pitched somewhere between insular and expansive, the echo and hum suggesting loneliness, though one which could apply to a crowded room or wide open plain. Put another way, the sadness Hour conjure could be either external or internal—a mindful person living within a lonely space, or a lonely person trying to feel more at home within an indifferent one. “This collection of songs explores the cracks and crevices of the spaces we occupy and call home,” the press release explains. “Each song balances the transcendence and claustrophobia that can come with sharing those spaces with others, and the decision, at times liberating, at times painful, to leave and start the process over again.”

With its more insistent percussion and experimental sound, ‘Town Meeting’ has a disorientating undercurrent, the intermittent field recordings of wordless babble adding to the perturbed vibe. Samples are a key part of the title track too, with subtle birdsong and the great rush of wind filling out the background of the simple acoustic sound. The ambient hiss of this track continues onto the grand, slow-burning ‘Doxology’—the most cinematic, post-rock inspired song on the record, bringing to mind talons’ minus the lyrics.

The album is closed by ‘From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower,’ and the sincere preciseness of the title is a good indicator of the sound. Again, the song emerges in gentle waves, a naturalistic patience that eventually rises into some of the most affirming moments on the record. As a finale, it feels like a message of sorts, Hour’s insistence that there can be value and meaning within the simplest of things, beauty within quiet calm, a home within any place, no matter how great or small.

Tiny Houses is out now on Sleeper Records and you can get it from Bandcamp. Also, Hour recently put out three videos which, speaking to The Line of Best Fit, Cormier describes as “attempts at capturing slices of three distinct artistic lives and visions, in process and imperfect, connected by songs from the latest Hour release.” Check them out on Youtube:

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