Album: Poplr Mesas

We didn’t live in New Mexico when I made this album, but we had visited several times.

Unrelatedly, I had been thinking I would like to do instrumental music ever since I put April 2018 on This Little Sound. In fact, I think the first thing I ever recorded that I wrote myself was an instrumental, back when I couldn’t and wouldn’t and didn’t sing. So I thought about it and thought about it and then one day it all just popped into my head - I would make instrumental records and use the name Poplr; I would brand it as meditation music for trees; all the songs would be inspired by trees and landscapes; it would be calming; it wouldn’t be as sparse as ambient music, but it also wouldn’t have as much going on as, like, solo guitar instrumentals.

But when I started writing and recording some songs, all of it sounded like I was just copying things I had heard from other people. I was having fun, but I knew I didn’t wanna release any of it—it just wasn’t there yet.

Then we went to northern New Mexico. For every trip we take, I shoot a lot of video and then make a little vlog sorta thing that’s just for us. Normally I use pop songs, but for this trip I spent forever and couldn’t find any that felt like a good match. On a whim, I said fuck it, I’ll see if I can write some music. The video was pretty much done, so I knew every section that needed music and figured I needed 7 tracks. So I set about trying to musically capture the different landscapes…the aspens, the mountains, the juniper and pinyon forest, the red rocks by Abiquiu and the Chama River.

Somehow I sat down and wrote and recorded them all in just a few days. Like as if I needed a glass of water and just turned on the tap and it was that simple. I think it’s because the landscapes just gave me such strong feelings. And if you feel something strongly, you can translate that into music or whatever.

When it was all done, I thought about it and listened to it on and off for a few months, mostly on bike rides, and it hit me: this is the first Poplr record.

Written, produced and performed by Robert Higgs

Recorded at Blanket Fort Studio

Mixed and mastered by RH

Released 2020 by Bird Band Recordings

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