Album Review: Explains by Little Wings

Sonically, Explains is breezy, effortless, and warm as a Pacific Ocean sunset, and its laid-back vibe helps tame some of Field's more manic, pop culture-laden diatribes like "Light Brang" and "Where." That chill vibe is bolstered by intermittent strokes of pedal steel, dulcimer, banjo, brushed drums, and parlor piano, all of which pair nicely with Field's laconic delivery and often moving observations about everything from wanderlust and heartache to Dunkin' Donuts and HBO's Entourage. .

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Even though Explains is the first Little Wings record to come out on the coveted freak flag-waving Woodsist label, it already feels like somewhat of a homecoming. Kyle Field, the man behind the project, is the embodiment of the modern troubadour, and, for years, he's roved between largely obscure labels, offering up his lo-fi folk songs to whoever will have them. Now, with a sizeable catalogue under his belt, his arrival on Woodsist — a label known for taking projects from their lo-fi bedroom confines and billowing new wind into their sails — comes as a fated turn in Field's prolific bardic journey.On Explains, for the first time, Field seems to be transcending the line between songwriter and song — somehow becoming his music.

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“Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the ‘folklore’ of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is.”– Antonio Gramsci Writing in the early 1930s1, Gramsci couldn’t have possibly anticipated the industry in folk music that was to arise after the Second World War.

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Little Wings’ Kyle Field has never really left the comforts of home throughout his discography. His new album and first on Woodsist Records, though, secures his position as one of the prime examples of the Northern California sound. Explains is not a departure for Field, but a delicious entrance into his world structured in a way that’s easy for newcomers to grasp.

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Little Wings — Explains (Woodsist)Kyle Field, now a couple of decades into Little Wings project, hides cleverness in soft, loosely strung country-folk songs that breeze by without friction. Considerable verbal dexterity and cultural reference gets drawled and murmured and wrapped in a soft humid haze of atmosphere, so that what you mostly perceive is the gentle pleasure of jangling guitars, front parlor piano and reticent brushes-on-snare percussion. Yet there’s a post-modern bite in the words.

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