Artist: The Incredible String Band
Album: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Year: 1968
The Incredible String Band played what I guess could be best described as "avant-folk." It's folk music which draws upon Celtic traditions but it also incorporates aspects of other world music (Middle Eastern, Indian) here and there. The instrumentation is oddball with probably 20 or 30 different instruments working their way into the mix. I love me some Jew's Harp, but this album is just flat-out weird hippie music.
There are two albums well known to me that this one reminded me of. One is Joanna Newsom's Ys, which I believe will be coming as part of these 1001 albums once we get up to the year 2006. Hers is a blend of Appalachian folk, 1970's singer/songwriter pop, and lush instrumentation, with Newsom's unique voice atop the mix. It is an album that I had to listen to twenty times before I started to connect with it, but now I'd say it's easily one of my favorites of the last ten years. The other is Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Barafundle. GZM was a Welsh folk band during the 1990's that released 6 or 7 albums--Barafundle found them at their most weird, yet most placidly pastoral. I guess some of Devendra Banhart's earlier material isn't too far off from this either.
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is similar to these albums in that its ethic falls way outside normal conventions. The songs don't follow the usual verse-chorus-verse format; some of the songs are more "suites" than songs. There are moments here that are unabashedly gorgeous and enchanting. "A Very Cellular Song" is the longest song in the set and quite possibly the best. "The Water Song" plays out as some kind of rain dance and is deliciously weird. "Three Is a Green Crown" fuses droning sitar with a Scottish folk hymn with generally good results. One thing I didn't care for in this album was the flat and whiny vocals. Meh.
I feel like this is an album (like the two I mentioned above) that if I listened repeatedly, it would begin to connect with me. For now, the album only really works for me in 30-second intervals at a time. So I've gotta downgrade it for that (for the time being). I do plan on listening to this again at some point so I can try to pin it down a little bit more.
Rating: Worth a listen
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