Despite its title and Horse Feathers’ northwestern roots, Thistled Spring still sounds like a snow-covered farm in the far reaches of West Virginia.

Sure, the sun is out and it’s not forty below outside — sunlight can even be seen twinkling on a slowly flowing stream — but for all of the album’s warmth, Thistled Spring still gives off the sense that seeds aren’t ready to sprout when Mother Earth’s winter coat finally melts away.

Lush instrumentation somehow manages to leave a vast amount of space for the listener to live in, and the songs are sparse in the best way. The Portland based quartet doesn’t rely on fancy guitar work or layers upon layers of subtle blips and clicks. Instead, the tracks on their third full-length are built on top of gorgeous string arrangements that buoy generous plinking banjo and tasteful acoustic guitar.

The band has left the drum kit at home and the most prominent percussion featured on the ten-song set comes in the form of tambourine, muffled kick-drum, and a few lone snaps of the snare. For good measure, they’ve even added muted down strokes of guitar and banjo, plus the sound of plucked cello.

Despite the lack of a typical rhythm section, the album doesn’t’ suffer. In fact, it’s what makes it a success. By not always being tethered to drums or rhythm guitar, the songs on Thistled Spring are allowed to flourish into hypnotizing, sleepy musings on forgetting lost loves (“This Bed”), loving liars (“As A Ghost”), and loving life even more (“Heaven’s No Place”).

Sure, the arrangements could easily stand tall by themselves, but they happily serve as canvases for Justin Ringle’s voice. His hushed, sometimes incomprehensible, delivery is well suited for dark lyrics like “the noose was broke/the witness was the cascade,” and he manages to make his delivery confident without losing an ounce of warmth or sincerity.

The sophisticated combination of the arrangements and Ringle’s lyrics make Thistled Spring worthy of many repeated listens. While it may come off as a sleeper, it’s an album to keep your ears open to. Keep this one close because Horse Feathers? have quietly forged ten songs worth every repeated listen they get.