Rising star on the Folk and Americana scene, Humbird has released their anticipated sophomore album, Still Life. Siri Undlin, the singer-songwriter behind the Humbird moniker, has collaborated with producer and multi-instrumentalist, Adelyn Strei and longtime bandmates Pete Quirsfeld and Pat Keen on the beautifully reflective, full-length record.
Still Life was created during the long months of 2020 - a time of isolation, and unrest in many forms in the outside world. Still Life is about a house – each song a different room where ordinary things happen, where the quiet moments of our lives unfold. Still Life is also about what happens outside of a house. It weaves through the rippling events that took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020 - a chronicle of a city reckoning with anger, grief, and white supremacy while our society watched.
Still Life is also an accident - a collection of songs that exist together to reflect a particular moment and a specific place. It is about survival and kitchen utensils, broken hearts and taco trucks. It’s about a pink bicycle strewn on the sidewalk. It is a letter to the future. Inside this record, Humbird wants you to smell the lilacs in the front yard and the tear gas in the streets. Humbird wants you to hear how hope is actually a verb. Humbird believes this record is grounded in the charms and tribulations of the domestic, but travels the whims of imagination into the strange and infinite abyss of inner realms, too.
More tangibly, Siri Undli wrote Still Life in her yellow bedroom. Then she walked across the hallway to her friend and producer, Addie Strei’s yellow bedroom, where she recorded and produced the songs. Experimenting with synth sounds, arrangements, and sonic worlds to create a safe and honest place for the songs to exist. They wanted to invite people into the house, into the home of their own bodies, where they spent so much time. “We watched the sun set and the garden grow and tried to catch those feelings too. We enlisted the socially-distanced help of Peter Quirsfeld and Pat Keen (longtime Humbird bandmates), as well as other musicians and collaborators Hilary James, Clifton Nesseth, Dave Power, Rachel Reis, Luke Callen, Elliot Heinz, and Holly Hansen.” In a time of extreme isolation, fear, and uncertainty, this Humbird record emerged as a wide, surprising, collaborative effort. It is an emissary of what happened and a reflection of deep friendships, artistic respect, and a love of togetherness. “Making this record has allowed me to embody some of the traumas of this time, to compost despair into stubborn resolve. These songs have been a healing process, a home. I hope that Still Life will be that for other people, too.”
In 2019, Humbird released the critically acclaimed, debut full-length, Pharmakon, which introduced us to Siri Undlin’s songcraft and Humbird’s harmonic folk style. With Folk Alley calling the album “... an absolutely hypnotic listening experience.” Atwood Magazine described it as music wrapped in “gentle rebellion.” The release garnered millions of online streams and a wide range of accolades, including 89.3FM The Current’s, “Best Albums Of The Year,” City Page’s “Picked To Click” award, “Best Minnesota Albums” from the Star Tribune, and as an official showcasing artist at SXSW in Austin. Most recently, Still Life has already received enthusiastic praise from within the folk world - awarded as a 2021 Kerrville Folk Fest’s New Folk Winners, where Humbird performed at in September, 2021. And no less than No Depression highlighted it as one of the top album releases the week of October 15, 2021.