Espers - The Weed Tree - For those not really paying attention, folk music has recently been making a comeback, although the rejuvenated version has often been of the odd, psychedelic variety, a subgenre labeled "freak-folk," which simply sounds to me like a name for people afraid of the word "psychedelic." (Then again, when have I ever liked any sort of genre name? Lap-pop? Post-rock? Folk-tronica? Dumb, dumb, and dumb.)
At any rate, Espers aren't really at the forefront of this movement (look toward their more popular peers like Devendra Banhart), but if you ask me, they should be. Nobody quite straddles the line between retro sounds and modern moods like they do, using their arrangements straight out of the Incredible String Band's catalogue to portray a sense of dread and paranoia absent from the peace-and-love era of 1967.
The Weed Tree proves them to be adept at taking others' songs and making them completely and utterly their own, a mark of any good folk artist. Songs ranging from the obscure (Michael Hurley's "Blue Mountain") to the appropriate (a haunting rendition of traditional English folk song "Black is the Color") to the improbable (Blue Oyster Cult's "Flaming Telepaths") get the cover treatment here, and every one of these songs would have fit perfectly on Espers' self-titled and self-penned debut album.
Espers have a rare gift: they can wow me simply with the sound of the six of them playing together. There's something about their chemistry, and the beautiful meshing of singers Meg Baird and Greg Weeks, that make them irresistible to me. "Entrancing" is a good word for it. Their debut album is still a much better listen than The Weed Tree, and this one would probably rank much higher on my list had it been an album of original songs, but nevertheless, The Weed Tree is a fine example of the unusual and appealing sound of Espers.
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