Espers - Greg Weeks - The Sighs of Stones

The passion for folk tradition knows no limits of time or space, and sinks its roots deep, retracing dusty paths—forgotten or only temporarily interrupted—to revive them through an utterly distinctive artistic sensibility, updating them into recent, if too often marginal, strands of a music whose most ancestral and ritualistic components are preserved and, indeed, further heightened. A representative crossroads between the allure of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon folk and the rediscovery of American Appalachian folk in the highly peculiar guise of the so-called “New Weird America”, the artistic venture revolving around Espers and their mentor Greg Weeks is undoubtedly one of the clearest examples of an artistic attitude elevated into musical practice—not confined to the band alone, but gradually flanked by numerous parallel projects and by the initiative of a label, Language Of Stone, capable of playing a unifying role for a hypothetical psych-folk and singer-songwriter “scene”.

Espers were formed in Philadelphia in 2002 when Brooke Sietensons, Greg Weeks and Meg Baird, three musicians in love with the folk of Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Jackson C. Franck, crossed paths. After a year spent rehearsing and playing live, the band released their self-titled debut album in late 2003, vinyl-only, on the cult label Time-Lag, in an edition of just three hundred copies (in January 2004 a CD version also came out on Locust, a small but important American independent label). Espers is a spellbinding record. The vinyl edition's gorgeous artwork looks like it came from another era (it recalls Emtidi's “Saat”). The music seems able to recreate the magic of old records by Bert Jansch, Dando Shaft and Fairport Convention, but with an attitude similar to that of the new minstrels of learned folk, Richard Youngs and Ben Chasney. 

Greg Weeks had already proven his talent across a couple of out-of-the-ordinary albums and EPs, but Espers' debut is a true daydream. A journey into the magical season of Anglo-Saxon folk-rock. Helping the group inlay the album's eight ballads is another half-dozen musicians from the wyrd-folk circuit, including some names who would go on to enter the Espers universe's orbit (drummer Otto Hauser, cellist Helena Espvall and bassist Chris Smith). Some of the album's songs retain a more traditional structure (“Flower Noontide”, “Byss & Abyss”), while others wander off, losing themselves in cosmic space (“Travel Mountains”) thanks to a visionary, dreamlike psychedelic sound. “Meadow” is a finely crafted time-loop, where Baird's and Weeks's synergistic vocal blend is accompanied by a host of strings floating in the background, counterpointing the gentle strumming of the guitar. Even the noisiest feedback is steeped in ecstatic sweetness, as in “Riding”, which starts out acoustic and unfolds into intriguing psychedelic digressions. An incredible record, an indescribable experience, songs that manage to reach the darkest recesses of the human soul and grant them a light that is faint yet, at the same time, lush.

Greg Weeks had begun his career as a musician in the late '90s, releasing his recording debut on the American indie label Ba Da Bing!. Fire In The Arms Of The Sun is an album that clearly shows the influences on the young American singer-songwriter, enamored as much with English folk (Nick Drake and Comus) as with the great names of the more “noir” strain of singer-songwriter music (Leonard Cohen and Nico). Awake Like Sleep (Ba Da Bing!, 2001) continues the path taken with the previous album, while the mini-album Bleecker Station (Ptolemaic Terrascope, 2000) reveals an even more intimate and at times decadent side of Weeks's art. Yet another EP, Slightly West, released this time on the Spanish label Acuarela, hinted at the turn that would, a few months later, take shape in Espers' debut album.

Following the debut album and the two tracks of the Riding single (Wichita, 2005) came a release that was unusual but extremely significant: an album (though often classified as a mini-album, despite its thirty-seven-minute running time) that, made up entirely of covers except for the closing new track “Dead King”, saw the band solidify into a sextet and take on folk classics as well as surprising reworkings, such as those of Durutti Column's “Tomorrow”, Nico's “Afraid” and Blue Oyster Cult's “Flaming Telepath”. The completion of the band's lineup corresponds to a substantial development of its harmonic sensibility, made possible also by the quality of the tracks chosen for reinterpretation within Greg Weeks and co.'s multicolored folk imagination. Indeed, if on the debut it was almost only “Sister” that bore the traits of a true song, The Weed Tree (Locust, 2005) explores, with remarkable personality, themes of a bucolic folk that often takes on light, dreamlike forms, also thanks to the grace of the frequent vocal interweavings, which heighten the dusty romanticism of “Tomorrow” and the darker shades of Michael Hurley's piece, “Blue Mountain”.  Although the initial imprint remains intimate and crystalline (see, among all, the splendid version of “Black Is The Color”), there are nonetheless psychedelic flights, inserted to crown “Rosemary Lane” and “Blue Mountain” and flowing into the electric twist that marks the acid crescendo of the lengthy “Flaming Telepath”. 

A year after the enchanting gem The Weed Tree, the band marks its move to Drag City with a new, self-titled album, a complex work that doesn't simply indulge in the gentle melodic grace of its predecessor, but instead steers the band's artistic expression toward darker, more progressive territory — a shift already partly glimpsed in Weeks's contemporaneous solo effort (Blood Is Trouble). The familiar, well-honed contours of the Espers' enchanted melancholy are immediately apparent in the bucolic lament of "Dead Queen," a soft ballad recalling the bewitched gardens of the debut: but the dusty psychedelic garb draped over the track grows increasingly twisted across its eight-plus minutes, suspended between ancient folk inflections and unsettling brushstrokes of a gothic-tinged organ. The band's renewed "acid" attitude, already evident on the opening track, becomes even more pronounced across the rest of the record, which balances precariously between nods to the clarity of classic folk ("Cruel Storm," the first part of "Children Of Stone") and psych-prog temptations whose mystical, vaguely ritualistic intent often ends up weighing down delicate melodies with a certain wordiness and an overabundance of elements, as in the second half of "Children Of Stone," where the song's evocative vocals are ultimately overwhelmed by a rhythmic surge that's modern in structure but decidedly dated in sound. Similarly, the album's relatively more linear, lulling ballad, "Mansfield And Cyclops," first unfolds in a kaleidoscope of vintage sounds and fascinations before retracing the familiar arc of the acid crescendo, once again evoking the psychedelia of the Seventies.

Any doubt about the acid-folk direction the Espers had by now embraced is dispelled by comparing the version of "Dead King" found on "The Weed Tree" with the one reprised and stretched here from four to eight minutes, during which heavy emphasis is placed on prolonged, restless organ reiterations, screeching strings, and freak instrumental tangles run wild. Copious injections of further electric acidity also mark "Moon Occults The Sun," whose opening section finds Weeks's voice soberly enhancing a spare acoustic arrangement, before the track's murky mid-song surge, which likewise perpetuates the dark aura of mystery deliberately cast over much of the record. II seems, from its very title, to mark a fresh start in the band's artistic trajectory, one that keeps intact — and indeed refines — their already proven ability to craft a musical formula that is undeniably timeless, though its psych-folk leanings often spill over into intricate instrumental weaves and harmonic constructions whose old-world charm can at times feel overworked in its formal precision.

Weeks isn't the only one to have launched a solo career from within the Espers. A few months after the release of the band's second album, Meg Baird debuted in a striking trio formed with Helena Espvall and Sharron Kraus, releasing a dreamy folk album recorded in a single afternoon, full of ballads that stir up ancestral urges (Leaves From Off The Tree, Bo'Weavil, 2006). Her true solo debut came the following year with the album Dear Companion (Wichita, 2007), preceded by a self-titled 7" released on Tequila Sunrise.

Leaving behind the electric guitars and psychedelic spices of Espers, Meg Baird recorded a dozen songs accompanied solely by acoustic instruments. Dear Companion gathers a handful of traditionals and deluxe covers, such as the evocative "River Song" by Chris Thompson and an equally successful rendition of Jimmy Webb's "Do Waht You Gotta Do." The tracklist also includes two Baird originals: "Riverhouse In Tinicum" and "Maiden In The Moor Lay," songs that reveal her love for the records of Sandy Denny, Fotheringay and Fairport Convention. The one surprise is an unexpected cover of "All I Ever Wanted" by the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, which Meg transforms into a small gem of touching romanticism. During the summer of 2008, Meg recorded, together with her sister Laura — with whom she forms the duo The Baird Sisters — an album of ten songs (half of them traditional folk numbers) arranged for voice, guitar and the occasional stray noise, in the manner of Jessica Bailiff. Lonely Town partly echoes the simplicity of a beautiful old CD-R recorded by the Baird sisters' father in 2003, still available on the site thebairdsisters.com. In 2011 came her first proper solo album — meaning one made up of original songs and recorded in a studio — Seasons On Earth, a truly magical fusion of American and English tradition, in which Baird's fairy-tale, nymph-like trilling (beguiling on "Stars Climb Up The Vine"), her guitar style often reminiscent of Jansch and Drake (the same "Stars Climb Up The Vine," "Even Rain," etc.) and the measured accompaniment of slide, dobro and banjo all flow together into the crystalline current of an age-old musical knowledge, which finds a fresh bend in her work. Four years passed before the next album, Don't Weigh Down The Light, the result of Meg's move from Philadelphia to San Francisco and the (re)building of a new team of musicians and collaborators, whose contribution is keenly felt on this new record, one less reliant on the American singer-songwriter's unmistakable, magical voice and her fingerpicking. The songwriting doesn't shine as brightly as before, so it's bolstered by full arrangements, psych-folk layers that cushion her airy vocal lines ("Good Directions"), or faint touches of slide guitar (the lengthy "I Don't Mind"). Even strong guitar ideas, like those on "Back To You," fizzle out somewhat for lack of melodic inspiration, propped up by well-worn Baird-esque refrains. The lead single itself, "Counterfeiters," is a song that blends all too easily into Meg's average output, a kind of "grey" self-portrait.

After a long silence of seven years, broken only by her involvement in the Heron Oblivion project and her collaboration with Mary Lattimore on Ghost Forests, Meg Baird resumes her solo path with the musically richest and at the same time most self-sufficient album of her career. Furling opens a decisive new chapter for the artist: alongside the crystalline, languid notes of acoustic guitar, Meg Baird weaves in esoteric touches, melancholy atmospheres, and the sound of piano, the undisputed lead instrument on at least a couple of tracks. The result is a hypnotic folk-psych groove steeped in echoes and resonances, giving rise to songs that at times possess the ardor of classics ("Star Hill Song," "Twelve Saints").

Even the seemingly more ordinary tracks carry a strong personality: hushed songs buoyed by barely brushed drums ("Unnamed Drives"), or cosmic guitar liturgies that seem to capture the very breath linking earth to sky ("The Saddest Verses"). Furling is a collage of assorted melancholies — icy and ecstatic ("Ship Captains"), spiritual and confessional ("Unnamed Drives"), and finally dark, almost hostile ("Wreathing Days") — the American singer-songwriter's most intense and ambitious album, nine songs possessed of an urgency and vitality that could never have stayed confined to guitar and voice alone.

Helena Espvall moved to Philadelphia from her native Sweden a couple of years before meeting Greg Weeks. Right from the start, the talented multi-instrumentalist began collaborating with many of the wyrd-folk scene musicians passing through the city, from Fursaxa to Sharron Kraus, from Samara Lubelski to Eugene Chadbourne, from Pauline Oliveros to Scorces, the duo formed by Christina Carter and Heather Leigh. In 2005 Helena recorded her first solo record, released only the following year by Philadelphia's Fire Museum. Nimis & Arx is a raw record that showcases Espvall's spartan, evocative musical disposition, aided for the occasion by that ceremonial master of darkness George Korein (Infidel?/Castro!). After the aforementioned collaboration with Meg Baird and Sharron Kraus, and an appearance in the touring band of the resurgent Vashti Bunyan, Helena recorded an album with the sage of Japanese psychedelia Masaki Batoh, the mastermind who has steered the Japanese psych project Ghost for more than twenty years. Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh (Drag City, 2008) contains a handful of songs with an arcane, mysterious flavor. Slow ballads, like madrigals propped up by the devilish notes of Masaki Batoh's guitars and Espvall's cello. A record that casts a spell and leaves doors ajar onto far-flung worlds of Swedish tradition.

Before the year was out, there was still time for a new Greg Weeks record, The Hive (Wichita, 2008), which carries on in the same direction as the latest Espers albums. There's even a cover left over from The Weed Tree sessions: Madonna's classic "Borderline," transformed by Greg Weeks into a pastoral litany in the vein of Pink Floyd. Certainly not the album's most memorable track. Much better is the one that follows, "Burn The Margins," which showcases the full electric fury of Weeks, capable of setting forty-year-old psychedelic aromas alight with his six-string. The dozen songs on "The Hive" are elegantly arranged with heavy use of vintage keyboards — ARPs, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, Korg and Mellotron: warm sounds that accompany the enchanted worlds Weeks describes, ever more at ease in the role of a modern-day Syd Barrett ("The Hive"). Also present and accounted for is the trusty Orion Rigel Dommisse, whose flute enriches some of the album's most visionary passages.

After the solo albums of its leading members, 2009 brought a new album credited to the band as a whole, once again marked, like its predecessor, only by a sequential number. If the second album seemed to signal a kind of fresh artistic start, III instead marks a further, partial break from its immediate predecessor.

Without entirely abandoning the psychedelic torsions of II, the Espers return to the dusty, vividly colored paths of a timeless folk, whose ancestral traits remain the band's favored subject of inquiry, now explored through a rediscovered lightness and dreaminess that translates into a string of melodic, vivid songs, flowing smoothly and soothingly, marked by fine vocal interplay and enveloping bucolic textures.

Guitars, violins and organs — along with controlled electric flare-ups with a pronounced Sixties flavor — frame a series of airy, psychedelic ballads, which reach their peak in numerous tracks all bearing the Espers' authentic signature: a precise ability to keep alive, and bring up to date, a convincing take on acid folk, one that finds, precisely in its refined melodic fluidity, an escape route both from any fixed temporal reference and from the risk of anachronistically imitating musical touchstones that, nonetheless, are never concealed.

There's no shortage of murkier, more unsettling passages, marked by ritualistic percussion and fuzzy digressions: these, however, serve to balance out the record's overriding lightness and to remind us, as a kind of warning, that the Espers' musical fairy tales can recount dark stories of witches even when the tone chosen for them is mostly bright and joyfully bucolic.

Validation for the Espers had already come from none other than madame Marianne Faithfull, who chose to cover the wonderful "Children Of Stone" on her album "Easy Come Easy Go" (Naive, 2008), entrusting its interpretation to the vibrant voice of Rufus Wainwright.

Language of Stone, meanwhile, is the name of the record label founded by Greg Weeks. Its catalog includes a dozen albums by Orion Rigel Dommisse, Mountain Home, Ilya E. Monosov, Ex Reverie, Festival, Woodwose, Lights, Noa Babayof, The Silver Summit, Jesse Sparhawk, Mythical Beast, Heavy Hands and Sharon Van Etten, split evenly between folk and psychedelia.

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