FEATHERS

Sole album (so far) from a neo-hippy commune living in the woods of New England, Feathers' musical realms can be closely link with nu:neo-folk or Wyrd folk. Whether is needed an inclusion on PA is a bit more debatable, for most of the curiosity of their music relies on their weirdness, their fragility or quaintness, rather than their complexity or adventurous meanderings. This octet (half male, half-female) are more intent on giving an intimate acoustic atmosphere with tons of dumb and tiresome fake birds songs and other "forest noises", without much humour (like a grizzly's fart, for example), which is too bad; because it is in their more instrumented music that they are most interesting.

Indeed, the opening Old Black hat is probably the album's most exciting track (with maybe two more), because the group appears complete with everyone contributing and full sound. The same can be said of the following To Each His Own, somewhere stuck between Long Live Death and Faun Fables. But most of the tracks have an acid-folk feel ala Incredible String Band, but lacking its bitesome edge, often with these tire and irksome bird calls. Silverleaves does have its own charms in these calmer songs, though. But it's clearly with busier tracks like Ibex Horn the Feathers does its job best throughout the almost 8 minutes of this track in which the group keeps changing the musical climates from PG Six, to Tunng to Espers reminiscences/influences and there is a pagan mood brooding from some of the drones out.

With only three songs that stand out from a relatively boring (IMHO) album, Feathers is indeed sometimes proggy enough to interest some of the Wyrder progheads, but I doubt this will please the majority of this site's users. Being nice to it, I'm roundi,ng it up to the upper star, but be warned!