Patrick J Crowley, 'Waterbirds' 

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• Patrick J Crowley, Waterbirds

(Self-released, digital)

Singer-songwriter Patrick J Crowley is hardly a new face in the local music scene. Playing in Americana act Deep River Saints and country outfit the Quasar Valley Band, the Burlington-via-California musician has produced an impressive catalog in recent years, including a strong solo outing with 2021's All Was Set Fair.

His latest, Waterbirds, is a departure from his previous work, as Crowley ditches the guitars and folk roots and goes digital. Over 10 tracks of glitchy beats, gentle synths and ambient samples, the record plays out like an easy-listening LP from the future.

Make no mistake: These aren't EDM bangers, and Crowley didn't make a dance record. The beats on Waterbirds are subtle, sounding more like a beating heart than a pounding bass drum. They form bedrocks for layers of haunting melodies and ghostly waves of notes, culminating in a retro-futuristic record that initially sprang from nothing more than Crowley tinkering around at home with his gear.

"They were silly and slightly embarrassing," he wrote of those early experiments with electronic music on his Bandcamp page. "But for this set of tracks ... I was dead serious."

That mindset is obvious as the record kicks off with the dark, spacey "And Palms as Eyes." Atop a washed-out synth figure, Crowley employs his clear, strident voice, painting a scene of overstimulation and general confusion — two states that weave their way through many of the songs on Waterbirds.

"Locked into a light / like a captured moth," he sings. "Doesn't anyone ever shut it off?"

To take nothing away from Crowley's work in more traditional genres, his songwriting lends itself to the sparse, ethereal architecture he builds on the record. On tracks such as "Lily Curtain" and "Suns and Roses," he eases into a sort of darkness that isn't really present in his music with the Quasar Valley Band and Deep River Saints. There aren't any songs about drunken late nights on Waterbirds.

Perhaps that's because Crowley tweaked his songwriting process for this record. As opposed to sitting down with his guitar to write a song, he started improvising on his keyboard at home. He took the varied bits and pieces and edited them together into songs before programming the beats. Once the beats were locked in, Crowley wrote vocal melodies and lyrics, leaning into the austere nature of the music he had created.

You can actually hear the process unfold on some songs, such as "A Gift for You," the closest thing the record has to a club track. It's easy to envision Crowley laying down the haunting, maudlin synth progression before deciding to play it to a four-on-the-floor electronic beat.

Seeing the blueprint does nothing to blunt the effectiveness of the music, however. Waterbirds is the result of a talented songwriter stretching his wings, unafraid to embrace a different musical approach in search of songs.

Stream Waterbirds at patrickjcrowley.bandcamp.com.