The haunting, wholesome folk arrangements by The Points North are as sparse as the New England forests that inspired them, and convey emotion as thick and heavy as the images of snowfall evoked by Chris Alspach, Regina Peterson and Dylan Clark’s trembling harmonies. Their refreshingly sincere and organic lyrics hearken way, way back to America’s childhood, and the untamed, tangled wilderness that inspired the very folk music movement they now breathe life into with their deeply genuine album, I Saw Across The Sound. This album is a breath of crisp wintery air in the otherwise stuffy folk music climate, now dominated by the recent surge of bastardized folk and folk pop, each band more overstuffed with arbitrarily placed eclectic instruments and general pretensions than the last. It may not be an album to shake the foundations of the music world, but it is one which affords the listener a chance to travel backwards through time, and watch as the gray high-rises, garish billboards and various other symbols of the corpocratic world in which we live today melt away, if only for a little while.

While I Saw Across The Sound is rich in many aspects, the most compelling, and most noticeable of these are the vocals, the choruses in particular. As soon as the first song, Stone Walls begins, the listener is caressed by the vocals of all three band members in their first of many choruses: “The stone walls to dark boards / cry out to me they say.” Now, I’m a sucker for a good chorus. It nearly always adds to the overall quality of the song, adding substance to a perhaps otherwise lacking track. These choruses are no exception; performed masterfully, all three band members deftly wield the whole grain, unhoned instruments that are their voices, weaving the distinct timbres of each voice over and under the others, to create a loose, meandering thread which one follows with half an ear, throughout the whole song.

However, while many other bands also employ choruses to the same extent as The Points North, no other band, as far as I’ve seen, spins them together in quite the same way as this Bostonian trio has managed to in this album. Instead of the tight, carefully measured and gleaming choruses most often found in the music world, The Points North have thrown caution to the winds and lazily cast their sometimes joyous, sometimes sorrowful, always poignant voices over one another to create an artfully wistful tapestry of startlingly intimate stories and sentiments. Adorned with chinks and holes, the choruses are only made stronger by the abandon with which they are constructed, and more often than not, rather than a studio album, call to mind a travel-weary band of bards, sitting around a fire and eloquently crafting into song their trials and tribulations, as you sit and listen, lucky to be there.

That said, the vocals are by no mean the only aspect of the album to be appreciated. From the twirling, feather light flute that carelessly dances through “Autumn Anthem,” to the carefully meted beat of the drum kit and relaxed, ambient guitar chords of “Ever White Bright, I Saw Across The Sound,” if it is lead by the vocals, it is carried forward by the eddying current of the various instruments present within. “Swift River Lament” is one of the best examples to this end. It begins with a hushed drum kit as sparkling chords are coaxed from a guitar, the song soon adds a flute to its line up and begins to pick up thematic weight as the lyrics, more morose, yet delivered in such a lilting, balladic fashion, add color to the already impressive track: “Through April, May and June I’ll stay / I’ll stay until, that’s all one day / When my home floods I’ll leave my love, my love, my love, my love.” From there, one or two other instruments make cameos, but for the most part the song stays consistent and plods along the trail beaten on the previous tracks.

At the end of the day, I Saw Across The Sound is a dusky, emotional folk-roots revival that takes the listener for a ride, and deposits him in the modern, fast paced world, only to have him itching for another trip back to the simpler time this album was written for. The Points North are a well seasoned folk band with talent seeping from every pore. I expect many great things from them in the future.