A Closer Listen
Spring is taking its time. This sentiment underlines the fact that spring doesn’t just spring at the equinox, but spreads slowly from south to north, a few miles a day, like returning birds. The same principle applies to recovery, to relationships, and even to justice, which makes Euthermia a flexible metaphor.
The Appalachian equinox is still the northern winter in all but word. Only now are the daffodils poking through the dirt, the dawn chorus expanding, the cherry blossoms beginning to bloom. One day the long-sleeved shirts are shed; that same night an unexpected frost.
Christopher Hamilton ((0)) captures this feeling beautifully on Euthermia. At first not much seems to be happening; and then everything does. The opening “brumation” – which refers to the dormant period of reptiles, amphibians and let’s be honest, some humans – is a slow, undulating drone, its development as patient and subtle as the outline of growing buds against the winter sun. In the heart of winter, one sees, but doesn’t notice how poised these protuberances are to unfurl.
The title Euthermia, referring to the heat of the human body, suggests the annual awareness that one can be warm without heaters and coats, as warmth returns to the world. In like fashion, the title track surges slowly but noticeably into a more active state, imitating the fish defrosting, the woodpeckers seeking grubs, the baby squirrels learning to jump from tree to tree. Hamilton is inviting listeners to participate in spring, to allow it to permeate one’s bones, to extract energy from the returning warmth.
Euthermia is also the latest entry in the ongoing Ceremony of Seasons series, a partnership with VISUALS Wine in which every equinox a wine is paired with the work of an Asheville artist. The area is still recovering from last year’s devastating floods, slowly making progress, mimicking the tempo of the arriving spring. This season’s wine, Of Sun Piercing Ice, is a dry rosé “infused with a small amount of agave, peaches and elderflower,” gorgeous in hue and effervescent in scent, the peach particularly pronounced, both invitation and prophecy. The peaches, not quite ripe, will eventually bloom.
One may choose the timing of the wine to match the opening of the album – in which case the warmth will sneak in like spring by the time the second side begins – or the match the opening of the second side, a pure field recording of spring peepers in chorus. For purposes of this review, I have chosen the second, because now the room sounds like spring and smells like spring, and I am about to sip the spring from a glass that has been reflecting the peach hue like sunlight through a glass marble. The first sip produces an immediate, palpable sweetness, joining the bramble and the frogs, the sight and the sound, a ritual of senses. And now Hamilton’s guitar begins to perform, shifting from drone to melody, as if dueting with the peepers. In the track named after the wine (or vice versa), the guitar momentarily falls silent again, as if in wonder that nature has produced such a chorus. And then a new drone, a new song embedded within the first like a sub-chorus, the ice changing form, the heart reawakening. The wine, aromatic and refreshing, is having its intended effect, producing an awareness of euthermia.
“cotyledons” and “tadpole tails,” each emphasizing a different side of spring, draw the listener even deeper into the burgeoning season. A third type of drone, confident and deep, emerges like the leaf from an embryo, like the wine from the fruit, like the confidence of survival as one realizes that spring is no longer taking its time; it is fully, irrevocably here, the seeds having sprouted, the final flock returned, the soul emerged from brumation, the world and the spirit returned to beautiful, colorful life. As Side B begins and ends in peepers, it can be played as a loop, a further symbol of the seasons. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come. (Richard Allen)
Sun Apr 20 00:01:07 GMT 2025