What these Dwindlers seem to made thinner are the boundaries between music and poetry, as the aspect which shines through listening this interesting release is the balanced cohesiveness between spoken words by the poetress Michelle Seaman and skillful bassist and composer Benjamin Dauer, who manages to emphasize bittersweet recitations by her partner-in-art with breezy jazz-spotted ambient suites and lulling smooth slap on upright bass, notoriously an unobtrusive presence in many ensembles. Although allegory is a device which could normally be associated to literature and figurative arts by means of symbolic representation, "Allegories" is a title in accordance with their opus, based as it is on lyrics which sometimes require a psychological interpretation of evoked images, which look like frozen by the perfect and somewhat seducing vocal interpretation by Michelle, whose suggestion everted on the listener has been propelled by interesting tricks by Dauer, who no wonder gained a certain notoriety in the ambient music scene. The wordiest track of the album is the initial one, titled "The Pelican and The Girl", a sort of portrait who Michelle manages to describe with immediate brushstrokes, a graceful sketch of a character whose frail balance look like misplaced with fear and its own harmony and has been matched with a pelican, a bird which has normally been associated to self-abnegation and extreme parental love. There's a sense of halcyon coyness even in those poems where ego-narrator evokes that kind of distant beauty, such as in the lovely "How The Ostrich Became A Girl and Her Bicycle" (a track which recalled to me - it could sound strange, but try to make a comparison... - "Releaase To The System" by Mark Franklin, maybe for the way Michelle pronounces words such as "beautiful around and around..." recorded in order to give the illusion they come from different directions and for that lulling crystalline wisely reverbered melody Benjamin created in order to highlight the mood of icy equilibrium and lonely "sanctity"), followed by a superb ambient track, "Pickering's Hyla", juxtaposed in the middle of the album in order to amplify pathos and drop anchor on the calm sonic bay the listener has gradually been led. Other relevant moments of the album are the second track, "Monkey", the most "upbeat" one, "Widow, Daddy And The Wolf", whose dynamics could remind some recent issues by Bonobo and The Cinematic Orchestra, "Peacock and The Kitty", where Benjamin seems to rarefy the sound and bring listener's head over fancy clouds while Michelle hulls meaningful seals, and the final track, Dolphin (the only bilingual poem with background voice of Esteli Caleca, echoing Michelle's voice in Spanish), where the original goal of this project ("an effort to change stories of pain and fear into stories of grace") appears brought to completion with a lovely track, dedicated to Anne Sexton and Peter Gabriel, whose song "Mercy Street" could be considered the starting line of "Dolphin". A very good release. Definitively beyond my expectations.