Nature is good and civilisation is bad. That, according to Time Out New York, is the overriding message of Bowerbirds’ music, and indeed their lifestyle philosophy in general. Their album, Hymns For A Dark Horse, due for release in the UK this month, is a mournful acoustic-based treatise in pastoral living and perhaps to some, a grating, 1968-style wonderment at the trees, the leaves and the forest etc…

Nature is good and civilisation is bad.

“That’s a very generalised way to say what we’re saying,” says Phil Moore, singer and songwriter and general heartbeat of Bowerbirds, “but I guess if it needs to be broken down like that then yes, that’s fairly accurate.

“All three of us, no matter how hard we try to get away from civilisation, we still have our iBooks and cell phones and everything everyone else has, so we’re not claiming ‘you should follow our lead, we’re better’. I feel like we try to focus more on how nature is good and less on how civilisation is bad. Though sometimes the lyrics do turn a little dark.”

The three Bowerbirds – Moore, Moore’s girlfriend Beth Tacular and multi-instrumentalist Mark Paulson – are based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the trio attempt to translate the themes of their songs into a sustainable reality. They live in an Airstream campervan in a remote area an hour outside town, living as simply as they can. “We’re not hooked up to the powergrid or anything like that.”

This is only a temporary situation however, as they continue work on their log cabin, which they are building only with hand tools, forecast for completion in 2009.

Bowerbirds formed when Iowan native Moore followed Paulson, who he had already played with for two decades, to Raleigh in 2004, when the latter’s girlfriend enrolled in college there. He started dating Tacular, born and bred in the town, and the three of them fell into a band together playing a form of rural nu-folk in the same mould as Bon Iver, Pinetop Seven or The Cave Singers. They have supported Bon Iver and The Mountain Goats (causing John Darnielle to positively spray himself with admiration) and are soon to go on the road with Calexico.

Now, anyone remotely familiar with the American South will notice the apparent incongruity of a bunch of Green-minded, left-leaning, bucolic musicians flourishing in a state that, if reputation is anything to go by, is full of fire-breathing, hippie-burning rednecks. But it seems Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital, is similar to Austin, Texas in that it is a breeding ground for artistic creativity, despite the traditional political outlook of its locality.

“It’s a small music scene but it’s really good,” says Moore, “a lot of people from the Midwest and New York move here. It’s small enough to be open-minded but not too small that it’s overly competitive. You wouldn’t think it driving into Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, and just like any southern city, but it’s great.

“There are plenty of rednecks in North Carolina but the triangle area of Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill is fairly liberal.”

As thriving as Raleigh might be, Bowerbirds are one band who actively flee from city life to write songs, rather than be inspired by any community of artists. Moore wrote the songs on Hymns For A Dark Horse when he and Tacular spent the summer in a tiny hunting village in South Carolina, Moore having taken a job as a bird watcher. “It was just a really quiet place, and I hadn’t been in an environment like that for a couple of years. It was just the perfect spot to write music.

“I guess a general theme of the album is a reverence of nature,” says Moore, something of an understatement, “and informed a lot by the time we spent in South Carolina and an appreciation for the wild things that still exist in the world.

“We try to spend us much time out in nature as possible to get a clear mindset to write the songs we want to write. It’s such a difficult thing to write songs that have the subject matter you want, rather than just putting out more love songs.”

Bowerbirds are going to be infuriating to a lot of people. Ostensibly here we have a band inspired by the natural world, making lilting music of the folk variety. They have beards. Two of them are in love. They are building a log cabin in which to practice sustainable living. Didn’t Reagan cull these sorts in the eighties? They could only come from rural America – as any band like this would surely be savaged into oblivion by the cynicism of a London or a New York.

The difference with Bowerbirds is that they are startlingly articulate in their tree-hugging. They demonstrate a poetry in songs like ‘Slow Down’ and ‘In Our Talons’ that places them above many of their ilk. In their liner notes they pay tribute to beat poet, naturalist and environmental activist Gary Snyder, whose positivist romanticism is clearly inherent in Moore’s lyrics, a balance to the ‘dark’ bits he speaks of.

The idea of living in a hut in the woods is one common to much American literature, particularly 19th century transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who built his own hut in the wilderness, and wrote about his experiences of alternative living in Walden.

“I don’t know how much I got from Walden,” says Moore, “but the whole idea of it is definitely what Beth and I are trying to live.”

And like the transcendentalist movement, Bowerbirds have that (arguably infuriating) belief that mankind is inherently good. Moore, while expressing his concerns that unless sustainability is achieved apocalypse inevitably looms, says, “I think that like all other creatures, humans are beautiful creatures and can do amazing things. I have faith in humans to recognise the beauty in the world.”
Unfortunately reality bites even these dreamers: Moore admits they often have to work to support themselves (through freelance web design), but ultimately, their priorities lie in a realm that money can’t penetrate. Which will be, as I have said, sickening to some, and uplifting to others. The line in the sand is drawn.

Bowerbirds play Bush Hall on 19 August and The Windmill on 20 August 2008.