When Kris Orlowski released Believer last year, the album was promoted as the debut full-length of the Seattle songwriter. That was a bit of a stretch, since Orlowski has been releasing albums for the past 10 years.
But Believer did sound like a debut for Orlowski. Throughout the album, his croony folk songs were emboldened by intricate, sparkling production from Martin Feveyear. It was a different sound, closer to Coldplay than Josh Ritter, but it worked, marking a fresh start for the songwriter.
At heart, Orlowski is an acoustic guitar guy, and his recent EP, Columbia City Theater Sessions, has all the markings of the modern folk idiom. Its three songs are recorded at the eponymous South Seattle club—a roots-friendly venue that Head and the Heart and Fleet Foxes fans are familiar with—and produced in an “unplugged” fashion by Damien Jurado, who, despite more recent psychedelic experimentation, is something of a contemporary indie-folk hero.
Then there’s the music on the EP, which provides a different look at some of the material from Believer, taking those big songs back to their origins.
A new version of the album’s title track, and its first single, has the singer keeping time on acoustic guitar and his bandmates trading their instruments for harmony. Orlowski has contended that this song has no particular religious meaning—its message is a broader one—but this new treatment sounds fit for a cathedral. Just sayin’.
“Fighting the War,” another single from Believer, is filled out with instrumentation, but here, under Jurado’s guiding hand, the track is more contemplative, peaceful, than Feveyear’s bombastic treatment. And in that way the production is truer to the song, which is about “saying no to fighting the wars of yesterday.”
The one new track here, “Winter, Winter,” is perhaps the most folkie song Orlowski has ever recorded, his vocals slightly distant, degraded, as he strums like Dylan to a simple song that appears to utilize the seasons to explore the vagaries of love—though between the recording approach and Orlowski’s loose-lipped singing style, I can’t quite make out all of the lyrics.
Nonetheless, it’s a song that wouldn’t fit on Believer. It’s smaller, more precious, a sign of what Orlowski has left behind. The question, then, is whether it signals a farewell to that old sound or a retreat from the bigger, bolder Orlowski who debuted last year. E
mbaumgarten@seattleweekly.com
Kris Orlowski The Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.net. With Le Wrens, Thurs., Feb. 5; Hollow Wood, Fri., Feb. 6. $20 adv./$25 DOS. All ages. 8 p.m.
