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Espers - III



Espers - III review


Send "Espers " Ringtones to your Cell 

   Pitchfork
When Philly collective Espers entered the stage with their 2004 self-titled LP, they rode the freak-folk wave that was then taking over indie and made it freakier, adding a spaced-out acid-rock sensibility that took them to some unexplored middle ground between Bert Jansch and Hawkwind. When I interviewed Devendra Banhart around that time, Banhart made a big point about how the new weird America vanguard wasn't actually folk at all, pointing out along the way that the Espers folks were all big Sabbath fans. Made perfect sense. Chuck Eddy (my former editor at The Village Voice), once pointed out that that first album-- and the one after it, 2006's II-- sounded like wispy, atmospheric goth-metal (Katatonia, say, or Candlemass) with all the metal stuff stripped away. Totally true. It also sounded something like screwed-and-chopped Renn Faire music. It was some seriously blissed-out opium-den shit.

On III opener "I Can't See Clear", something's different. The tempo has crept up a couple of notches. The drums are actually audible in the mix. Meg Baird's voice remains as otherworldly as ever, but she's using it to sing a relatively straightforward melody. In short, "I Can't See Clear" sounds like pure Renn Faire music-- not screwed, not chopped, just straight. There's still a great little psych guitar lead in there, but the addictive gloom of previous albums is gone. And, for the most part, it stays gone throughout III. Only one song breaks the six-minute barrier. The vocals, from Baird and leader Greg Weeks, aren't quite so buried in the mix. The arrangements come relatively packed and, at times, almost choked or cluttered. When violins start dive-bombing the lovely ethereal acoustic harmonies of "Sightings", for instance, it's like the band is actively resisting the afghan-rug rapture they're capable of.

So what we've got here is Espers' move toward simplicity and directness, a look that doesn't suit them especially well. Those arrangements are a big part of the problem. Weeks has numbers at his disposal-- the first time I saw Espers live, they peaked at 12 people onstage. And on III, he apparently can't resist using those numbers. So moments that would've worked fine with just an acoustic guitar or a murmuring organ get both, plus a spindly violin or a flanged-out electric guitar or some kind of mandolin thing. When you're using all these folks to crank out some sort of stoned drone-raga, it works a whole lot better than when you're trying to play a simple folk song. The songs on III seem to want to be simple folk songs. And unlike on previous albums, the players aren't always pushing each other higher into new celestial realms. Sometimes, they're just getting in each other's way....full text

   Dustedmagazine
Good folk music should haunt you at night. It might lull you into a feeling of blissed-out tranquility, but secretly it’s imparting you with an occult, cabalistic knowledge. Behind the flowers and fields lies not utopia, but the devil offering you a chance at the sublime in exchange for your soul. It will turn you into Faust or Don Juan, except you won’t realize your predicament until you’ve already signed the contract. It yearns back to the days of the Gothic when the gargoyles atop cathedrals were more than just ornaments and the Baroque with its ornately crafted lines and musical interplay. And Espers, the Philadelphia-based trio of Meg Baird, Brooke Sietinsons, and Greg Weeks, make good folk.


So how does a good folk album create this concealed doom? It relies on a combination of vocal lines, instrumental choices, and arrangements. In the case of Espers, the instrumentation is crucial: most are stringed, acoustic, and either strummed or bowed (the dulcimer and autoharp provide wonderful idiosyncrasy beyond the normal plucked 12-string guitar sound), though there are some electronics and wind instruments added at just the right moments. Each instrument is given just the space it needs to speak and make its impact heard, from the beckoning oscilloscope rumbles and cello moans on “Meadow” to the spaced-out electric guitars that cut through the mix in “Travel Mountains.” And when a timbre comes to the fore, it is allowed to go on as long as it needs to really make a point, develop an idea, and reach some kind of conclusion. The whole thing is intensified by the almost complete lack of percussion (Sietinsons’ finger cymbals being the one exception, but they’re more a color than a beat), with all the rhythmic sense coming from something strummed.


And if the predominantly minor instrumental parts aren’t disconcerting enough, Weeks’ and Baird’s voices make the whole affair even spookier. Vocals are often said to hover, float, soar, or any number of other clichéd terms, but here they seem to exist on the very edge of the natural world. They are the will o’ wisps to the music’s marsh; the apparition that stands by your side in an abandoned house whose presence is felt more than seen. Both Weeks and Baird sing in a plain, unadorned style that has just enough ambiguity that you wonder if they’re actually there. In fact, the specific words matter less than the individual lines and harmonies, but the words sometimes emerge fall in line with their surroundings....full text

   Theskinny
If any genre of music epitomized the late 1960s it was psychedelic folk. The meeting of acoustic guitars and trippy boundary pushing seems rooted in those few years when many believed that the counter-culture could win out over the political forces of evil. But such is the cyclical nature of music that, like just about any style you care to mention, psych folk has had its own revival. Along with bands like Animal Collective (in their pre-Moog days) and Six Organs of Admittance, Philadelphia sextet Espers have led this renaissance. III is their fourth album (presumably they don’t count covers album The Weed Tree), and like its predecessors it conjures all sorts of natural splendour: wide skies, dark forests, grand landscapes. The dextrous musicianship on songs like the eerie Caroline and the undulating That Which Darkly Thrives leave you in no doubt: psych folk can outlast its sell-by-date. [Nick Mitchell]...full text

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