The Wooden Sky

The song begins simply: A kick drum beats like a heart in a panting chest, one guitar sweats out one note, another plucks a rudimentary figure. "We never walk in the light," begins a worn, used-up voice. "There's something hiding for us in the night." The band behind the song, the Wooden Sky, emerges slowly from the sonic shadows, but when it does — on an ecstatic refrain that suggests an indie-rock equivalent of Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky" — the voices and spare instruments exalt the shadows as one. "Something Hiding for Us in the Night," the standout track from 2009's If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone, suggests that these Canadians aren't just moody folk rockers. They're a vigorous, quietly ambitious, musical force.