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Windy & Carl

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Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conversatory (Kranky, 2026)

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This collaboration between four Michigan-based underground music lifers is something of a dream supergroup for me, as it brings together my favorite ambient/space rock duo with one of my favorite songwriters (Fred Thomas of Saturday Looks Good To Me). Sadly, Fred is off the clock as a songwriter for this one, but the consolation prize is that this is my first exposure to his Optigan Conservatory bandmate Frank Rotondo, who is the leader of the long-running Detroit-area free music ensemble Laughing Gas. The result of this long-gestating union of old friends is a series of drone-based improvisations that were later fleshed out and enhanced with overdubs and edits. Stylistically, it lands quite close to the twinkling and shimmering guitar bliss of classic Windy & Carl (which is perfectly fine by me), but there are also some fresh and compelling innovations that leave me hoping that this album is the beginning of something more rather than just a mere one-off.

The opening “Conductor” makes for a representative if teasingly brief introduction to the pleasures that follow, as a slowly flanging synth drone is gradually fleshed out with sustained harmonium tones and a pleasantly disjointed and disorienting calliope-like motif. That last bit is the part that most sets this quartet apart from most other purveyors of spacy psychedelic drones, but there are also some cool tingling frequencies that are more felt than heard.

Given that it clocks in just under 3 minutes, “Conductor” is not quite substantial enough to leave a deep impression, but the following “Coast Starlight” happily remedies that situation by stretching out to a pleasurably slow-burning 7-minute duration. While the foundation is again a slowly flanging synth drone, Windy & Carl soon emerge from the shadows with twinkling pointillist guitar and subtle ghost shimmers of chords. There are also some sensuous spacy undulations, rhythmic murmurs of smeary feedback, and an increasingly distorted edge. There are even some glimpses of a dark and woozy organ motif suggestive of a kitschy 1950s horror movie as well, which seems like an especially ingenious and beautifully understated way to imbue these cosmic drones with some distinctive (and playful) personality.  

The album’s other obvious gem comes a bit later in the form of “Apparition on 3rd Street,” as it gradually evolves from gentle hiss-soaked ambience into something that resembles a Slowdive breakdown that is about to blow up into a roaring wall of sound crescendo. Instead, however, it simmers and seethes in a state of suspended animation while cooing, wordless vocals languorously drift in and out. The first time those vocals appeared, I thought for a second that I was about to be treated to a noirish, jazzy saxophone solo and that it would be the exact element needed to elevate the piece into something truly killer. Instead, however, the piece gradually (and more subtly) becomes great in a completely different way: the drones steadily intensify into a howling undercurrent and develop a lagging “warped tape” dissonance below a viscous electric piano or processed guitar solo suggestive of glistening droplets of mercury.

While the more modest pleasures of the remaining three pieces do not quite ascend to the same level, they are generally a likable bunch. In particular, the closing “Timelines” scratches a “classic Windy & Carl” itch, as a dreamily rippling sea of trebly guitar layers is gradually fleshed out with subtly buzzing electronic drones and a buried synth squiggle that insistently repeats like a mysterious deep space transmission. Elsewhere, “Vellum Paper” steers the band’s slowly oscillating synth drone into more Kubrickian deep space horror vibes, while the woozy suspended animation of “Alvin Loving” nicely weaves together vaguely jazzy and reverberant strums with a quiet fantasia of electronic warbles and bloops. 

It all adds up to a very pleasant dose of gently droning Michigan-style space rock ambiance, but it is a bit too understated and improvisatory to be particularly memorable, which is a bit unexpected given the pedigree of everyone involved. On another level, however, it is a genuine pleasure to hear these four friends come together to casually weave a suite of gently hallucinatory space-drone zoners (not unlike fellow Michigander Warren Defever’s Infinite River project). The seeds of something greater are certainly here if this foursome ever opt to cultivate them further, but the low-stakes looseness of this album definitely has its charms and any new music at all from Windy & Carl at this stage feels like a welcome and unexpected visit from an old friend.

Listen here.  

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Windy & Carl, “We Will Always Be” (Kranky, 2012)

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It has been several years since the last Windy & Carl album, but thankfully they are back and just as reliably excellent as ever. Maybe even more so, as several of these songs easily stand with the duo’s finest work. Some long-term fans may be a little disappointed that they don’t indulge their song-like or epic-length tendencies much this time around, but I doubt it: We Will Always Be largely sticks to what they do best (beautifully glacial and glistening guitar) and does it warmly and purposefully.

This album has quite an endearing and unusual origin story, as it was never originally intended to be publicly released. The tale begins back in 2008, when Windy Weber released her first solo album, the uncharacteristically dark, caustic, and brooding I Hate People. Urged on by their friends, Carl Hultgren decided to start work on his own solo effort, which he worked on for a year and a half, then presented to Windy as a gift for her alone. 

When she told him that he should release it, he suggested that they make it a collaboration instead. Consequently, We Will Always Be is essentially Carl’s solo album enhanced by occasional cryptic and quiet, oft-whispered vocals from Windy. Weber also contributes guitar to one (undisclosed) song, but her most significant contribution is as muse: Carl has rarely seemed more inspired and the blissed-out shimmer of these pieces serves as the perfect counterbalance to I Hate People. Carl clearly loves people (at least one, anyway). Equilibrium is restored.

The opening “For Rosa,” however, is a notable departure from the rest of the album, as Windy languidly sings over an unprocessed, strummed acoustic guitar and some buried amplifier sizzle. It is difficult to imagine a Windy-less version existing, but the remaining seven pieces are all very much devoted to Carl’s shimmering, multilayered guitar heaven. Obviously, that is pretty expected territory for Weber and Hultgren and they’ve covered it many times before (and quite beautifully). Nevertheless, there are some subtle and less expected touches that elevate this album into something quite special. 

For one, this sounds like ambient music, but it doesn’t feel like it: these songs have a presence and restrained intensity to them that prevents them from fading into the background. Secondly, there is a very rewarding and distinct arc to the sequencing. The relatively brief early pieces are somewhat muted and static, but the songs grow steadily longer, better, more varied, and more intense as the album unfolds. The final three pieces, in particular, are all absolutely mesmerizing and essential (albeit in Windy & Carl’s characteristically understated way).

That propensity for understatement and subtlety serves the album well, as it makes the late album rough edges seem quietly devastating. Those edges get their roughest on the closing 18-minute epic “Fainting in the Presence of the Lord,” which is the unquestionable jewel of the album (and possibly their career). I am not sure quite how the sounds are being made or who is making them, but it initially resembles a static-ravaged cat singing over a slowly intensifying bed of sacred-sounding organs. Then a slow-motion wave of gnarled, distorted guitar noise gradually envelops everything and it is absolutely wonderful. 

I have rarely heard guitars used in a more poignant, heartbreaking manner: Hultgren evokes mingled feelings of anguish and ecstasy that words could not possibly hope to convey. Such a spectacular crescendo necessarily makes the rest of the album seem a bit pale in comparison, but the less-intense “Nature of Memory” is another huge highlight. Without those two pieces, We Will Always Be would already be a very good Windy & Carl album. With them, it is easily among their best.

Listen here.