The Times discovers "freak folk"

Was this edited at all?

puke

I thought the oddest included "evidence" for Summer of Love 2.0 was that the Boredoms are playing the Vice fest

but, man oh man, i was all ready to rip this thing up line by line when i saw the thread title. bummer. now i won't get any of those mopes posting things like: come on, at least he's trying. and he's writing for a general audience and what do you expect from a newspaper, blah, blah, blah.

But dragging in Blue Cheer is lame. Leigh Stephenson rejoined for one show last year in SF and they do the same live album over and over -- and it's a heavy metal blooz band, nothing freaky folky about 'em.

Hallucinogens, rock 'n' roll, love of nature, interest in social justice. These are all people basically fleeing in horror from the homogenizing, materialist, bottom-line corporate monoculture that's overtaking America.

And this made me laugh because the "homogenizing corporate monoculture" took over America and buried everything a good long while back. Mix more "herbalism" in.

Did I tell you the time back in '88 when my friend at the local newspaper had to go an interview someone who was into wheat grass milkshakes and enemas? It attacked the disease of corporate monoculture poisoning your system from both ends.

"Initially dubbed "freak folk," it looked like a trend of the moment a couple of years ago, when two California artists, Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, attracted attention with charmingly shaggy, deceptively whimsical, largely acoustic albums.

But the scene they spearheaded has grown steadily and expanded sonically, getting less folkie and more, well, freaky. It has also gone international. And this season — the Summer of Love 2.0 — it comes into full, wild bloom with releases, tours and festival appearances that promise nothing less than a new age of Aquarius.

The new music is more a mind-set than a genre. It usually employs acoustic instruments, though it's as likely to have roots in progressive rock, free jazz or Brazilian pop as in Appalachian ballads."

This is a computer software/programmer notation. As in Release 1.0 and Release 2.0 or version 1.98x3se. Now, Summer of Love II and I'm buying.

promise nothing less than a new age of Aquarius

Promises, promises no one can keep. Nothing less, huh? That's a strong bill. The horse would trot as well if some of the brags were dismounted.

come on now.

then there are others like Lavender Diamond I think, as mentioned how she hired a PR firm before releasing an album, are more about the image than the music

Feathers are weirdly actually the real deal. as much as their whole look and vibe annoy the shit out of me. they really do live in squalor in western mass.

goooo feathers!

while the article is hardly touching base on something "fresh" it's not terribly written

albeit a tad formulaic, i just don't think a lot of these bands should be clumped together

but a lot of them are friends and play the same shows. it makes sense in that way. they might not all sound alike, but they go together.

This summer kindred bands like the darkly pastoral Espers, the gorgeously lyrical Vetiver, the raging Comets on Fire, the entrancing Six Organs of Admittance, the boogie-rocking Howlin Rain, the molasses-grooved Brightblack Morning Light, the computer-enhanced Tunng, the improvisatory Wooden Wand and the noisily experimental Grizzly Bear are all releasing CD's, as are others - Jolie Holland, Ane Brun, Cibelle, Juana Molina and M. Ward - less connected to the scene but reflecting its aesthetics.

reads like a laundry list to me (with adjectives thrown in: raging! entrancing! noisily experimental!)

the raging Comets on Fire

Just a couple months ago this was a hipster metal band on the Invaders comp. They're a band for all features writers. Where's Witch? Witch surely belong here.

but reflecting its aesthetics.

Use the word aesthetics, earn an insult. The mind tosses upon the ocean.

But that may soon change

I'd say run this in Lex-Nex to see how overused it is. Just stand on your two feet. If you're gonna say it's nothing less than a new age of Aquarius, then certainly you must agree it will change NOT the waffling may change. Who will care if you are wrong?

"We're living in the age of the reissue,"

But I thought we were living in nothing less than the dawn of the new age of Aquarius!

You see them engaging with the music of their parents' generation almost like it's a contemporary phenomena.

Spend day in record store. Watch who buys Led Zeppelin records.

Mr. Chasny's work with Comets on Fire of Santa Cruz represents the noisier side of new psychedelia, as does the self-titled debut by Howlin Rain, a side project of the Comets' guitarist Ethan

Go to CD Baby. "represents more publicized side of new psychedelia," actually.

"I come from the biggest hippie area in the world," said Mr. Chasny, who grew up in Arcata, Calif. "But they don't listen to the real hippie music. They listen to Phish and that groove stuff. I love the old psychedelic music because it wasn't just imagery."

to the sad and tired jam band scene

Yes, here 'tis, briefly. Only someone else, not the writer, gets to be the strawman saying it.

The middle of the road hippies aren't as cool as the fringe hippies. Of course, Mr. Chasny. Hey, that would be a good title for a tune in the genre, "Of course, Mr. Chasny."

"Most of the album was written on hikes at Point Reyes National Seashore and is about interacting with the wilderness,"

That's a nice place to go. Lots of people do.

Time to make lunch.

nah he let ben chasny do it for him:

"I come from the biggest hippie area in the world," said Mr. Chasny, who grew up in Arcata, Calif. "But they don't listen to the real hippie music. They listen to Phish and that groove stuff. I love the old psychedelic music because it wasn't just imagery."

He lets Chasny do it for him. And the funny thing is Chasny's complaints of Phish scene are the same complaints I have of him.

this doesn't even make sense. if that's where all the hippies are, then whatever they're listening to would be the "real hippie music" be it Phish or any other jam band. chasny = douche

-- Satan's Slave (thefly88...), June 17th, 2006 11:51 AM. (roger adultery)

^^ wins the thread

And I hear Stephens has rejoined Blue Cheer full-time, or at least for the length of their upcoming tour. They're now 2/3 original members again.

Wait...looked like?

the only problem i had with this article was the summer of love 2.0 comment which also fits right in with the imaginary "scene" stuff. but it's not like other journalists aren't guilty of the same exact thing and it's also not so egregious to try and tie quite possibly disparate cultural strands together because looking from the outside in it does actually seem like there are more similarities than not. besides, if the point is to maybe turn your reader on to other artists if they maybe only know a couple that are mentioned, this seems like a decent way to do it. how many of these artists would show up in the same last.fm playlists/recommendations?

...yeah, and Stone Breath also, And where is the luv for Terrastock/Terrascope Mag!?!

"Freak Folk" is more like a second or third wave of "Psychedelic Folk" at this point.

Vg

The most daft part of the NYT article was But with a tendency toward art that's both homespun and solipsistic, and that shows little interest in music industry trappings, they can seem less interested in Making It Big than in keeping it small. Which is why Devendra shows up in NYT fashion shoots and Joanna appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live, but hey let's prop up that indie mystique. Aside from that, the article is the same one we've been reading for years. Let's go back to 2004...
http://www.providencephoenix.com/music/other_stories/documents/04238381.asp

The question of whether the scene's over or just beginning depends on whether the current crop of artists keep things interesting enough to attract new musicians. If they do, then this time next year Madonna will release her freak-folk album. Or did she already?

Thought the last Devendra was a dud. I know it's a bit absurd but I see Newsom's new disc as some kind of bellweather. I've heard the material, and it's great; whether or not symphonic arrangements will destroy or enhance it is the question. I like Espers, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm hearing the evocation of actual emotions or the evocation of the soundtrack to a 70s eurohorror film. Whatever happened to Faun Fables? It's like they got kicked off the commune.

PS Brown is the new black.

well ok, such a piece never existed; but the thrust (hooray for hyper-derivative tribute bands that harken back to the 60s! again!) is the same.

lots of those bands are great and don't have the "kooky" abrasive vocals like banhart/newsome

excluding the feathers singer, of course. all that guy's missing is a jester hat and permanent employment at ye olde rennaissance faire, in the parking lot of the hy-vee on route 24.

also: on her "London, London" cover, Devendra apes M. Ward's style. that's one connection, but also Devendra's sometime bassist used to be M. Ward's bassist.

i think bands that do not fit this freak folk tag abound in this article. juana molina. grizzly bear. cibelle. m. ward.....

true dat on the feathers guy.

New album on Drag City... touring... the usual. She/they certainly would have been an appropriate name to drop, though.

JAMES BLACKSHAW + GLENN JONES + JESSE SPARHAWK

WEDNESDAY JUNE 21ST
AT ABOVEGROUND RECORDS
GREAT HARBOR TRIANGLE
EDGARTOWN, MA

7PM / ALL AGES / $ 5 SUGGESTED DONATION

lobster rolls at my house afterwords.

i might just come on down

I wish there were shows like this in my town too...

With little-to-no-coverage it seems...

Aboveground Records

July, 28 2006 at JACK ROSE + GLENN JONES + GEOFF MULLEN @ Aboveground Records!
..8 Great Harbor Triangle, Edgartown, MA 02539
Cost: $5 suggested donation

I hope that link works. Asian Mae is Colleen from CS. Here solo stuff is just beautiful 4-track folk stuff. She has a CD-R out and another one on the way.

I saw them open for Smog. They were objectively bad -- completely lacking in charisma or presence and musically dull.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A166KWUBADDTVX/ref=cm_cr_auth/102-4301937-3588968?%5Fencoding=UTF8

How can a band be 'objectively' bad? I think they're great.

Campfire Sounds 2006 Festival
at free103point9 Wave Farm, Acra, NY
Review by Justin Stewart

"Who wants to carry a harp down a hill?" asked one of Stars Like Fleas'
myriad performing members, shortly after the Brooklyn sometimes duo,
sometimes-sprawling collective finished the first of their two sets
early Saturday afternoon. They had to move from the second to the main
stage, no mean feat considering the latter was less a stage than a
small clearing beside a thick-trunked tree about half a mile up the
hill. The performance had been well worth the trek, both for onlookers
and the harp, guitar, xylophone, violin, cello, flute, sax, keyboard,
drums and wind chime-carting Fleas. Minus electricity, and thus shorn
of their usual sub-surface buzz and drone, the group more than
compensated with a boost in bleating unadorned melody, stretches of
silence (or at least no music, as leaf rustle and amazingly well-timed
bird caws plugged the gaps) and playful resourcefulness, exploiting the
percussive possibilities of twig snapping and tree-as-drum to the
fullest. An early festival high point, the set, perhaps more than any
other, encapsulated what is so novel about Campfire Sounds; that is,
the placement of avant folk acts heavily reliant on software and
gadgetry (and mostly hailing from densely packed urban areas) into a
summer idyll setting.

Now in its second year, Campfire Sounds is somewhat of an anomaly among events at Wave Farm, the experimental internet radio station.
free103point9's second home (after Broklyn). There is less bias for the
recondite and the theoretical, or "Transmission Arts", as founders
Galen Joseph-Hunter and Tom Roe have named their primary focus, and
more space for artists packing honest-to-goodness songs. That isn't to
say that Campfire Sounds lacks for experimentation, or that other Wave
Farm events like Spectral Garden or the frequent exploratory Webcasts
are classroom cold, just that this is the fest most apparently suited
to spreading down blankets, lighting up the grill, or simply
disappearing into one of the property's numerous hammocks to the tune
of a uniformly agreeable roster of acts.

The lush acreage of Wave Farm is located in the Catskill Mountains,
about a two and a half hour drive from New York City. The safe remove
from anything urban seemed to put outfits like the feral freak-act
Bunnybrains in their proper place and further extract the organic
sounds and sylvan themes that groups such as The Fleas and The Dust
Dive explore in their instrumentation and lyrics on record. The Dust
Dive's Bryan Zimmerman went so far as to wear his environment, draping
himself with bog grime and megaphoning his poignant little-boy-Iost
vocals, accompanied by original member Laura Ortman's plaintive violin,
while knee-deep in a pond for his group's first set. Afterwards,
Zimmerman complained of baby leeches that had tumbled down his shirt
but that had, admirably, led to no interruptions.

Melanie Moser kicked things off on the generator-powered main stage
with some lightly strummed folk in the Sandy Denny mould, decorated
with effects pedal loops and some awkward George W Bush sound clips. A second Dust Dive set and one of several gap-filling DJ sets from Roe
who, in keeping with the festival's unbuttoned looseness, stuck mostly
to recognizable reliables from the rock world, led to an atmospheric,
sound-dense performance from the decidedly un-folk (avant, freak, or
otherwise) Latitude/Longitude. Battling the threat of rain and a
finicky power source, the NYC duo still managed to distance themselves
from the other acts through the attention to detail exhibited in their
maze-like, peculiarly haunting treks.

Stars Like Fleas' choice timing, right as the newly bright sun began
lowering behind a distant Catskills mountaintop, would have excused and
even made a sub-par set magical, but the group stole the show with a
transcendent performance, with not one of the dozen or so members'
joyous contributions wasted. Uninterested in mere complacent layering,
they offered the urgency and surprise of a more earnest Akron/Family.
Unison chants of refrains such as "forever always" remained bearable
thanks purely to their charisma.

Following a head-scratching mindfuck circus show from Beefheart
disciples Bunnybrains, experimental guitarist Gown delivered Campfire
Sounds' loudest shockwaves, his delayed fingerings cresting into
glassy, torrential sheets of echoing chaos. More in line with his
collaborations with Thurston Moore (under the name Bark Haze) than his
frequent Christina Carter teamings, Gown's maelstrom left noise-leaning
onlookers in awe and more than a few neighbors undoubtedly poking their
heads out of their farmhouses in confusion many acres away. Rain delays
bumped Samara Lubelski and MV + EE with The Bummer Road's sets past the midnight hour, welcome luck especially suited for the former's fragile, whispery musings. Lubelski, dimly lit by only a few surrounding tiki
torches, plucked and whispered tunes some degrees removed from her work with groups like Hall Of Fame and Metabolismus.

With an audience roughly three or four times the size of 2005's and
with the continuing expansion of the Wave Farm (a new study centre
opens in 2007), it's likely that this young festival will see several
more years. More fun, depending on your definition of the word, than
the typical freel03point9 happening, it wasn't exactly Woodstock
hedonism. As at the station's installation or sculptural transmission
sessions, artists tried to somehow incorporate the acoustics of the
bucolic surroundings, with varying degrees of success. Radios wedged
into trees scattered across the property and tuned in to the live
broadcast of the event, saturated the entire farm with the crackling
tones, in a perfect gesture of union between microradio and fringe
music.