The Lofty Pillars is a folk-pop project of Chicagoans Wil Hendricks and Michael Krassner. Krassner is noted as the Windy City studio man who orchestrated the Boxhead Ensemble, a post-rock all star ensemble created for the Dutch Harbor soundtrack. The Pillars features more traditional songwriting whereas the soundtrack used open, painfully sparse instrumentation to impart a sense of longing. When We Were Here is an 11-song romp through his subtle, piano driven folk melancholy that sounds vaguely like batch of weather-beaten Bowie ballads. That said, the album has beautifully pedal steel and orchestration that recalls the diverse but equally wide-eyed work of Nick Drake, the Dirty Three, and even Journey. ~ Daphne Carr