Filthybird

If you didn't know the singer and guitarist in Filthybird were married, you could probably guess just by listening to the band's second album, Songs for Other People, released last year on Chapel Hill's Holidays for Quince Records. Renee Mendoza, a native Texan but a long-time North Carolina transplant, is an eccentric vocalist who draws from '70s country as well as from British folk—part Jessi Colter, part Sandy Denny. Brian Haran's candlelit production, full of warm spaces and unexpected flourishes, treats performances with affection and care. He records her adoringly, savoring each stray syllable and each formed note with such care that each Filthybird song becomes an act of love and admiration.

Mendoza and Haran began dating around the time they started Filthybird in the mid 2000s. Her previous band, the electronic Ashrae Fax, had dissolved, and he had recently moved south from New York, where he had played in various bands and honed his chops in the studio. For years, their band and their relationship developed in tandem—at times rockily, at times comfortably. Filthybird released its first album in 2007; a year later, the couple married. Since then, they have opened Fret Sounds, a guitar repair shop in Graham, and worked diligently on their follow-up, the nervy, resourceful Songs for Other People. It combines a range of styles—Athens collegiate rock, Texas outlaw country, spectral folk, avant garde experimentalism—into a unique sound.

Between albums, Filthybird changed line-ups to bolster its sound and enable its versatility, adding second guitar player Sanders Trippe and drummer Jim Bob Aiken. Bass player Michael Duehring rounds out the quintet, now an agile band that can keep up with Mendoza's vocals. Still, it's the central couple who continue to define and distinguish Filthybird as a true labor of love. —Stephen Deusner