Horse Feathers: Cynic's New Year

By Stephen Thompson, NPR Music

Horse Feathers' Justin Ringle sings warm, sweet-voiced, comfortable songs about discomfort. Broken homes, a hardscrabble day-to-day existence, alienation and doubt, a difficult past of which no one dares speak — they infuse every note and minute of the Portland, Oregon, band's impeccably lovely folk music. On Horse Feathers' fourth album,

Cynic's New Year, that tension between gorgeousness and grief even gets a single line to sum it all up: "Beauty and loss, they are one and the same."

Cynic's New Year — out April 17 — is all exquisite grace and charm, infused with more than enough beauty to compensate for the losses it mourns.

Cynic's New Year will be available to stream on demand from April 9 through April 17, 2012. It's scheduled for release on April 17, 2012.