The usual sounds brought to mind at the sight of a cityscape are typically loud, harsh, and overbearing. Roaring bus engines, rumbling trains on their tracks, and buzzing markets and cafes all amplify the sounds of people coming and going. These sounds create a constant, yet ever changing hum – a tune that can provide limitless resources for creative minds, but can also pummel the creative spirit. It is from this constant hum that We Are The Willows’ Peter Miller conceptualized the tonal sound-scapes of his debut full-length, A Collection Of Sounds And Something Like The Plague.
Originally from Eau Claire, WI, Miller now resides in Minneapolis, MN where he attended college. At the age of 24, Miller has spent the majority of the last six years immersed in the Minneapolis music scene, actively recording and performing in bands throughout his college years. Since graduating, while working his former full-time job as a preschool teacher, Miller has concentrated fully on music. We Are The Willows is one of two current projects; Miller also lends his songwriting, guitar playing and vocals to well accomplished Minneapolis-based indie rock band, Red Fox Grey Fox. We Are The Willows started as a side project – a place to write songs outside of the structure of a full-band, but has slowly become a main focus for the singer/songwriter.
In 2007, We Are The Willows released its first EP, titled Bravery. Bravery set the groundwork for We Are The Willows’ folk-pop sound, consisting mostly of Miller’s signature countertenor voice singing over simple finger-plucked guitar melodies. A Collection Of Sounds And Something Like The Plague features this sound, though Miller seems to intentionally bury it beneath his pile of organized noises.
A Collection Of Sounds… was written during Miller’s post-college turbulence of the past two years in which he struggled with the challenges of a demanding work-life top of relationships gone wrong, internal pulls of questioning spirituality, and the absence of life’s fulfillment. Miller sought an existential transformation, so he turned to the sounds of the city around him, the constant hum that he found himself in. With a single microphone and pocket recorder he gathered, collected, manipulated, synced, spliced and arranged these sounds and began placing them against a backdrop of folk guitar plucking, ukulele strums, and simple, sincere vocal melodies.
In attempt to transform his own emotional surroundings, Miller found himself transforming the mundane, constant grind of his physical surroundings. The vibrations of train tracks as a train leaves its station (“Norwalk, Iowa”), the rhythmic crash of beer bottles shattering on a cement floor (“The Sorry Psalter”), the chirping of birds and pat of leaved footsteps on a stroll through a park (“Tress In The Park”) all became something else in Miller’s instrumentally layered backdrop.
