VETIVER – to find me gone

(CD/2LP, Fat Cat)

Fat Cat has finally made the transgression from one of the most interesting avantgarde / experimental record labels to one releasing the most interesting neo-folk that started with the release of the now already legendary comeback-album by Vashti Bunyan. The feel for songwriters and acoustic sounds has always been there – take contributions by Crescent, Animal Collective or David Grubbs to the labels’ history – and since this neo-folk doesn’t seem to be a thing that chews up good labels and then spits them out like some others, I am all fine and happy with this development. As long as Fat Cat keeps on releasing the best songwriter records this side of Sub Pop (to name another label that has changed.) Especially if it results in records like “to find me gone”, who really have that possibility within them to grow into in long-term companions that offer more the more time you spend with them. To round up this introduction and talking about neo-folk it doesn’t come as a surprise that Andy Cabic, the main mind behind the band Vetiver, has been a member of Devendra Banhart’s band as well as having toured in support of Vashti Bunyan.

Fortunately time has passed on and now it is possible to regard the songwriters of the late Seventies as influences and not have to stop your musical interests with Nick Drake to be accepted when playing an acoustic guitar and to cite songwriters as eclectic as Joni Mitchell or Little Feat without being looked at strangely. Of course, the softness and gentleness of some of the songs on “to find me gone” has that Drake feeling, but over the course of the record and especially towards the end, the band will fall into an energetic, almost noisy soundmash that revves up the tension in the record greatly. Other than that the whole record has a very laid back feeling spanning from “Harvest” to “grieveous angel” or from the “Byrds” to “Tusk” or throw in that first album by James Taylor as well. With songs like “I know no pardon” making it directly to my summer mix tape for its great harmonies and beautiful melody-line and after all not lastly for its easy and reduced but nevertheless clearly audible country twang. Think of Gram Parsons and his American Cosmic music. I am sure Cabic has taken his dose of that. Or at least lended some licks for the guitar, the pedal steel and the piano from there.

Other parts of the record stretch their harmonies to more experimental bands like Mice Parade or Mum, without ever losing the basic orientation towards classic songwriter music. Cabic is a very controlled songwriter and arrangeur of songs. So in a way you might argue that Vetiver is a very conservative band and “to find me gone” a very conservative record. If that is so, then demanding manufactured goods to be of good quality and lasting lifetime is also conservative (and it seems to me as if it really is.) Quality seems to have become a very conservative characteristic also in these our days of mass consumation and ubiquitous commercialism. Maybe it is my age, even my definite coming of age, but these days I am more and more on the lookout for records that talk to me on a very basic level, with songs that are worth remembering. As you might have guessed from that I am listening to a lot of very old records at the moment, aside from my still constant dose of experimental and harsh stuff ranging from metal to electronica. How that works together, I don’t know, but I won’t be ashamed to name Bill Wither’s self-titled album as one of my favorites at the time. And “to find me gone” is right behind. Any record that mentiones “tumbleweeds” should be, especially when the quality is up to demands.