San Francisco Bay Area composer, producer, and musician Dren McDonald released Vox Pterous via Appearing Records this summer. The album takes the instrumental architecture of his acclaimed 2023 record Pterous and completely opens it up, inviting a remarkable ensemble of vocalists into its layered sonic worlds and transforming the material into something entirely new.
The album consists of six extended compositions, each unfolding like its own small narrative, with three tracks running over six minutes. From the very first seconds of Anchors Up, it becomes clear that this is going to be a record built on remarkable musical precision. The song begins in an ambient space before an energetic acoustic guitar enters, at times reminding me of American Football. Amelie Anna’s vocals add another layer of emotion, with her wistful, melancholic voice complemented by subtle backing vocals. Instrumentally, the track is stunning and gradually develops an almost post-rock character, but rather than exploding into straightforward catharsis, it continually pulls back, introducing fragments of vocals and instrumentation that give the second half a more ambient and minimalist feel.
The longest track on the album, the seven-and-a-half-minute Resting of Light, features Carla Kihlstedt on vocals. Her voice sits prominently in the mix, yet never feels artificially placed on top of the instrumental foundation. Instead, it feels completely natural, almost deliberately casual at times, adding a cinematic quality to the composition. Even though the instrumental arrangement – naturally – can easily stand on its own, the vocal performance feels like an integral part of the piece.
Aviator Eyes continues in a similarly dreamy atmosphere. The tracks flow into one another remarkably well, with the changing vocalists – here Girl Swallows Nightingale and Paula Frazer – providing subtle shifts in character without disrupting the album’s overall flow. The unconventional way in which the material was created seems to be part of what makes the entire record feel so distinctive.
The Things He Could Bury is perhaps my favorite track on the record. There is something almost gothic about its atmosphere, while its central melody is incredibly memorable, especially during the repeated refrain of “The Things He Could Bury.” The combination of urgency, emotion, repetition, and intricate instrumentation makes it one of the album’s most immediately compelling moments.
She’s The Sky, featuring Lily Bloom and Daria Novo alongside Girl Swallows Nightingale, brings another luminous vocal dimension to the record. Like the other compositions, it doesn’t rely on a conventional verse-chorus structure; instead, it gradually develops through layers of voices, textures, and instrumentation, creating something that feels closer to a constantly evolving soundscape than a traditional song.
The album closes with Fading, which begins with electronic ambient textures before introducing a striking acoustic guitar riff. There is something almost medieval about parts of the arrangement, while a short instrumental passage around the two-minute mark is one of my favorite moments on the entire album. The atmospheric ending is equally beautiful, allowing the record to fade out rather than providing an obvious resolution.
Fading was also the experiment that gave McDonald the confidence to expand Pterous into the vocal-driven album it ultimately became. The track features vocalist Sophia James (whose song “Somebody New” has amassed more than 25 million Spotify streams). McDonald knew James through her grandfather, Chuck Wackerman, who had been his high school jazz band teacher, and recognized that she possessed the musicality and emotional depth needed to take the piece beyond its instrumental origins. The strength of her performance ultimately encouraged McDonald to arrange the remaining compositions and seek out the group of collaborators featured throughout the album.
There is also a deeply personal element behind Vox Pterous: each song was dedicated to a different person McDonald had lost over a three-year period. That context gives the album’s emotional weight an additional dimension – the music never feels sentimental for the sake of it, but there is a persistent sense of loss, reflection, and human connection running through the entire record.
Vox Pterous is ultimately a record that rewards patience. It is not built around obvious hooks or conventional songwriting structures, but around atmosphere, texture, precision, and gradual emotional development.
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