PROGRESSIVE FOLK
PAUL SEXTON scours the new releases to find there’s nowt so prog as folk.
This month’s gold medal for sonic sunshine, with strong rays from Laurel Canyon and high-end 1970s AOR, goes to Zervas Pepper’s excellent Endless Road Restless Nomad (Zerodeo). The superb songwriting, golden harmonies and shared lead vocals of Welsh duo Paul Zervas and Kathryn Pepper have long been deserving of a huge audience, and the new set may be their best yet. Elements of psychedelia and mysticism, notably on There Is Only One Love, complement the elegant tunefulness of Salvador, Endless Road and so many others. Sumptuous stuff.
It’s 25 years since Moon Far Away were founded in Arkhangelsk in the north of European Russia. That’s a whole bunch of experiments in the neo-folk laboratory, the latest results of which emerge on their fifth album Athanor Eurasia, their first for Auerbach Tonträger/Prophecy Productions. Masked leader Count Ash describes the band’s sound as a folkloristic marriage of Western canons and Eastern sentiments. Be it on the gently charming The Blank Flag Of The Europe or heritage chants such as Napadi, Rosa, the blend of gathered Northern Russian folk tunes and modernday influences reinforces Moon Far Away’s standing as notable alchemists.
1994 was also the year that their labelmates, French pagan folk mainstays Stille Volk, hit the scene, and they’re still right on the progressive money with their seventh album Milharis. It flies out of the traps with the high-intensity harpsichord and ardent vocals of Sous la Pea de la Montagne, that instrumentation augmented by jew’s harp on L’Aurost Lunaire. These are the myths of the Pyrenees, titled after and inspired by the mountain range’s shepherd of legend Milharis, brought to life in all their pagan splendour on hurdy-gurdy, nyckelharpa and the like. But when the drums kick in, as on Incantation Mystique, there’s plenty of the rock concept feel to attract a wide fan base.
Fiddle and banjo are the tools of House And Land’s trade, deployed to great effect on their second album Across The Field (Thrill Jockey), the sequel to their eponymous 2016 debut. The North Carolina duo of Sarah Louise and
Sally Anne Morgan have attracted much praise for their part in reconfiguring the American folk tradition, drawing here on material from Appalachia, the Ozarks and across the Atlantic. Improvisation and contemporisation are the names of the game, especially with lyrical guitar infiltrating the violins, for example on the expansive instrumental Carolina Lady.
Big Thief’s U.F.O.F. (4AD), the third album by the indie quartet from Brooklyn, narrowly missed the mainstream UK top 40. It has certain undertones of trippy folk, sometimes with the acousticbased prog-AOR canvas of the opening Contact. Elsewhere, they’re more traditional on Cattails, at others almost Americana, on Century, but always pleasingly off-kilter.