Walton, guitar, and Marting, bass, share vocal and songwriting duties on the 11 track album. Walton’s high pitched vocals match the playfulness of Daniel Smith’s voice with the delivery of Grizzly Bear’s Edward Droste. Marting contrasts with deeper, fragile vocals, highlighted in tracks such as "Stars on Patrol" and "Hydroelectric Power Commission: Fear Holds Us Back". All three students at the University of Missouri, the band mates were separated just a few months after their formation. Marting headed off to study the flora and fauna in Australia and New Zealand, while Walton studied in St. Andrews, Scotland for a semester. Though physically separated, the band shared their new songs and material through their blog, “the concern” (www.ptarmiganmediaconcern.com/blog). Once reunited in June 2008, the trio blended the influences they’d collected from three continents to form the sound for their first album. With both songwriters studying biology, the album finds itself infused with geological and nature references. Marting penned “Thylacine” about a venture into the wilderness of Australia to find a marsupial wolf believed to be extinct since 1936 - but has sightings reported regularly. Themes of isolation and vulnerability in the songwriting are accompanied by imagery of exotic, desolate scenery. But that’s not to say this is an album of particular loneliness - instead - the sights and senses experienced in nature provide a comforting connection to all those before who’ve s