Spring is Ever-Becoming: These Trails

This is just what I needed to get into the summer mood...

-The cherubic jig of recorders -The hazy grin of dulcimers -The warped wring of slide guitars -Bubbly vocals crooning and cooing out coaxing folk ballads

Where has this record been all (our) lives? Most of us weren't even alive when it was recorded... These Trails are yet-another-long-lost/bottom-of-the-treasure-chest gem, yanked upwards by Drag City (the same way they did with Detroit's garage-fathers, Death).

This record begs to be listened to outside...or at least on some idyllic shoreside cottage's porch with the windows open; the gentle acoustic guitars elucidate the flicker of sunlight through verdant green leaves flapping in the warm breeze; the vocals are a delicate balance of sublime and spiritual, soothing and ghostly...and the eclectic blend of instrumentation (including an arp synthesizer simmering under an often dazzling, but not dizzying, cascade of acoustic dances) gives it an air of something alien... or, you know, -just a substantially spaced-out, blissed-out acid-folk trip.

Not that I want to drudge up eye-rolling "genre" pre-occupations... But...but... This record might be the missing link to the, er, "freak-folk" troubadors from the mid-00's... see: Joanna Newsom / Devendra Banhart. The intriguing kick here - it's bemusing delivery of Os Mutantes-flavored obscuro-pop (if it were high on hammock-swayed tranquilizers) with a uniquely Hawaiian-tinged vibe. These are the day-dreamy pennings of singer/songwriters Margaret Morgan and Patrick Cockett, as they wander the hills and mountains of Honolulu and Kaua'l, a way-out-west perspective churned in the dying days of hippie-dom.

You need some sweet sounds to quench your thirst for groovy-yet-cerebral chill-out music?

Here.

And listen to "Psyche I & Share Your Water" -from The Rising Storm