Vikesh Kapoor has his mastery of acoustic folk down to a science. For the last three years, the Pennsylvania transplant took to Portland's usual grey skies smoothly in the further development of his songwriting and musicianship. Kind of like Portland's own Iron & Wine, his music progresses in a similar manner to the beverage, only getting better and better as it ages with time.

"Down By The River" is the newest track to come from Kapoor. It's beautiful in its simplicity, with Kapoor's vocal delivery and strumming gently guiding the listener throughout the song. It's a track perfect for a summer evening drive or being stuck inside all day watching the rain fall.

Vikesh Kapoor is officially dropping the single tonight at his show at the Beacon Sound, with accompanying sets from Haley Heynderickx and Claire Puckett of the Austin, Tx orchestral indie band Mother Falcon. The all-ages show starts at 8pm and is just $10.

Mother Falcon is Austin’s premier big numbers band, which you likely already knew, but they’ve just released a new track whose strength comes from its efficiency and its singular elements, rather than from the amount of noise that a big group can make. A lot of the energy in the just-released single “Kid,” in fact, comes from the lone female voice doing the largest portion of the singing, which is all lightness-leaking breathy tones that kick the track off with just a few strummed chords and an egg shaker beat in accompaniment.

This being Mother Falcon, however, layers and instruments are quickly added, tossing in at some point everything from horns to chanting to some really nice background drones that waver from right in pitch to just off to completely dissonant and give the song a lovely off-kilter texture. There are moments where MF does do the Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene pioneered “all of our giant band playing at once” thing, but the restraint they show as a group throughout the song and even in these moments, and the benefits that each piece in the group adds to the overall song in these cacophonous parts has Mother Falcon resembling those other influential big bands at their thoughtful song-engineering best.

Speaking of seminal 2000s bands, MF also seems to be channeling something that was going on at that time in North American music (and is much murkier these days), which was a sense of just wanting to get together with other weird kids and have a lighthearted, happy time. “Kid” has that same kind-of “temporary refuge from the suburbs,” sunny-day in the park flying kites and drinking stolen vodka in plastic cups with your also-loner friends kind-of feel to it. In this age of endless online outrage clashes and what seems like just a whole damn lot of divisions between people, this is a feeling that’s nice to see it not only expressed in MF’s newest work, but downright nailed.

The track sits here below for you to get your feel-goods from, and you can keep up with the MF at their Facebook here. This is music that’ll help you remember that sometimes it actually does stop raining, which even some of us Texas storm-lovers might need right now, and it precedes the full album release on 8/14.

Mother Falcon's presence is creative, it's assertive and it's tight.  They're an orchestral indie band with enough technique for them to have their own band camp for kids, where kids can learn about writing songs, orchestrating bands and practicing their instruments; sounds like a sweet alternative to School of Rock.  Their sound is incredibly rich, combining rock n roll energies with orchestral instruments and structures.  Particularly worth listening to is their live album of their performance of Radiohead's, OK Computer, in it's entirety which they appropriately titled MF Computer.  It's a successful re-imagination; the closing of Paranoid Android in particular gave me goose pimples.  You can catch Mother Falcon live on August 27th at the long Center Concert Club and then again on the 30th at The Mohawk.  Don't miss it.  -Jake Saunders