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 Folk
Yeah
Meditations
on the state of the new folk music
By
Josh Potter
Au
Verbs
(Aagoo)
There’s a moment somewhere in the space between “All My Friends”
and “Are Animals,” where Au fans are either enlisted or passed
over. The choir of voices, who had just offered an inscrutable
cumulous incantation, begins to clap to a tinny banjo riff
and you’re either on the bus, begging the Portland quartet
to let you do anything—shake your keys onstage every night—or
watching it coast by to the corner they’ve carved out of this
New Weird America.
The face of the new primitive is a gentle one, and one that
might look more familiar than you’d expect. A few years back,
Devendra Banhart sent folk music into a tailspin of flamboyant,
joyful indiscretion, but now, bands like Au are popping up
in more domestic digs, equally prepared to shuck and wail.
And that’s probably why it’s so infectious. The closest the
band come to conventional pop tunesmanship is “rr vs. d,”
but even here the bump and grind belies the band’s teacherly
appearance. At the band’s core is Luke Wyland, a talented
pianist, who stitches melodies with a thin enough thread count
to let in light, but thick enough to support ribbons of clarinet,
organ, percussion, and, of course, abundant vocals. Verbs
is an album of simple celebrations, and proof that we’ve made
it to the other side of the lo-fi revolution, where the scope
of an idea no longer needs to be meager in the face of modest
means.
 Make
a Rising
Infinite
Ellipse and Head With Open Fontanel (High Two)
In a similar sense, the opening moments of Philly-based Make
a Rising’s latest have the sort of energy that draws you in
and makes you want to sign on the line; it’s only after a
few bars, though, that you’ll realize you have very little
to offer this mob. In terms of scope, this one might be the
most ambitious offering the art-folk world’s produced this
year. Brothers Justin and Jesse Moynihan write vast, rollicking
compositions that recall the experience of shaking your head
upside-down, staring at the sun, and then reciting all the
nonsense syllables that come to mind, while watching the telephone
poles tick by on the car ride home from school. Each song
on the vaguely conceptual album plays like the soundtrack
to some forgotten fairytale: Zappa-esque renderings of Peter
and the Wolf that crawl cautiously from Steve Reich’s
Cave. Adept at all the Brian Wilson stuff without having
to flaunt it, the brothers command a microsymphony in and
out of diabolical passages. Echo chambers ambush unsuspecting
lyrics and sweep them off to looping codas where they cycle
long enough to get lodged in your head before collapsing in
on themselves and spiraling off to reprise a theme started
some songs back. Pairing song titles like “Bradford’s Big
Boatride [Beyond (The Dawn)]” with lyrics like “What do I
know?/Nothing, nothing” it’s clear that the band has surrendered
that nihilistic, post-psychedelic sense that the experience
of their music isn’t worth much, but with cosmic giggles like
“How’s ’Bout a Love Supreme,” they prove they haven’t also
shed the requisite humor for tempering spiritual gravity.
In a word, it’s like they’ve ridden the kitsch of anti-folk
back to another prevalent childhood experience: wonder.
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 Lights
Lights
(Language of Stone)
Let’s get something straight be fore we proceed: Brooklyn
band Lights do indeed have a member named Wizard Smoke. A
San Francisco-born projection artist, she is, more importantly,
one third of the vocal trifecta that haunts the band’s eponymous
record. As spiritually driven as the aforementioned acts,
Lights trade ecstatic celebration for dirging meditation.
If psychedelic music can be considered “traditional” or “conventional,”
then here it is. Stark, repetitive bass lines anchor meandering
guitars that are consistently dolled up in vintage effects.
All this, though, is background for the smoky, subterranean
vocals, which often ride pulsing toms to caterwauling climax.
In their lyric sensibility, the band clearly nod to Vashti
Bunyan, the fairy Godmother of altered folk, but their brand
of pastoral paganism is far more windswept. With an ethos
that is undeniably NYC, Lights imagine what the Velvet Underground
would have sounded like if Andy Warhol had cloned Nico twice
over and John Cale had kicked Lou Reed’s jive ass.
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Castanets
City
of Refuge (Asthmatic Kitty)
Ray Raposa, Ray Raposa, Ray Raposa: Now, try and say it five
times fast. Ray Raposa is Castanets, and castanets might be
the last instrument you’d expect to hear on any of Raposa’s
records. Folk music has always been the documentation of a
place and a time, but Raposa has taken this principle to a
new conceptual level through immersive musical experience.
Having finished a tour by boat through the Intracoastal Waterways,
he decided to hole up in a motel in Overton, Nev., northeast
of Las Vegas. City of Refuge is the dark, lonesome
document. Spacious, high-plains guitar interludes sweep through
honky-tonk crooners. The drawl and twang are abundant, yet
drenched in analog delay. Owing to Raposa’s roots in electronic
experimentation, the album is cinematic like a more depressive
Ry Cooder playing the soundtrack to a more sunburned and thirsty
Paris, Texas. Sufjan Stevens’ and Jana Hunter’s contributions
function more as friendly consolation than musical collaboration
without ever crossing into tear-in-my-beer sentimentality.
It’s funny: Dizzy Gillespie once said that all music was really
folk music because he’d never heard a horse play music. Well,
if ever a horse sat down with his guitar after a long slog
across the desert, the songs he’d write might sound a bit
like this.
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