Ed Askew's first release, Ask the Unicorn, came in 1968 on the infamous ESP-Disk label, home to The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, The Godz, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, and others. Freak-folk decades before the term existed, Askew may not now sound as much of an outsider as he must have in the late '60s, but he's still delightfully strange and idiosyncratic. His second release didn't emerge until 2003, having sat in the vaults for nearly 35 years. For the World, his fifth release, has a diamond-in-the-rough quality. Askew's voice has grown richer over the years, both fragile and forceful at the same time. His rich uses of imagery and symbolism are remarkable, as is his keen ear for dialogue. The vocal asides—such as the quips "what was that all about?" and "I went to art school" from "Gertrude Stein"—play out like clever stage dialogue, as he moves seamlessly from a Lou Reed–style talking delivery to an emotional melody line. The arrangements are often sublime. Keyboards, banjo, bass, and harp (by Mary Lattimore), plus cameos by guitarist Marc Ribot and vocalist Sharon Van Etten, subtly support these tender compositions.