From my particular vantage point, given the kind of music I listen to, and for whatever other reasons, I rarely hear about music from Italy. I certainly hear a lot of stuff from France and Sweden and Finland and England, as those places seem to produce delicate pop and brutal metal in seemingly equal quantities (and everything in between ). Ok, if I was seeking it out, sure, there is more than likely a veritable wealth of music coming from Italy. But I am sort of a lazy collector of music—wanting to discover but too timid to broadcast my ignorance in seeking. I am certainly a fan of music typically and lazily typified as “slowcore” and its ilk—stuff by the likes of defunct or forgotten bands like Codeine, Ida, Red House Painters, Idaho—bands that in one way or another, Magpie Wedding remind me of. Patient, contemplative music, fond of experimentation, Americana and shadows of classical composition, made by musicians careful to (within means) record and master their works in a way that captures the crispness and preciseness of their instruments and lyricism, “Torches” is a new release that seems like an old classic, something I would immediately force upon my friends, laud as brilliant and criminally overlooked.

So Magpie Wedding comes to me as a wonderful surprise—bringing up not too distant memories of a young teenager discovering bands Ida and Red House Painters for the first time, overjoyed at how beautiful, joyous, and oddly melancholy music can be. That feeling, the tender feeling those bands produce, is something Magpie Wedding does in it’s own equally mesmerizing way.

“Torches” is a quick 30 minute EP, but with incredible, almost orchestral pieces like “All Without Leave” (A love story about an inventor of musical instruments and a tree growing in one of Detroit’s many abandoned buildings) that splendidly weave together your typical guitars and drums with string instruments and an accordion, it doesn’t feel like an EP in the pejorative sense. “Torches” is a fully thought-out release, right down to its delicate hand-made/cut/glued cardboard packaging.

The EP has also been out for quite awhile, but the copy Digitalis received was (apparently) late, as “Torches” has been selling quite well. This little nugget of information was incredibly heartening to hear—Magpie Wedding is a band that is now filed in my list of bands to force upon unwitting friends and relatives, and “Torches” has quickly found a spot on albums I’m likely to revisit ad nauseum. This is more than highly recommended. 9/10 -- John Ganiard (22 July, 2009)