Freak Folk

As much as any self-respecting musician hates being pegged as part of a premeditated movement, the critic-created tag of "freak folk" is actually a fitting reference point for the following songs. The reason being that, yes, there's indeed something bizarre, something wholly unique happening beyond the acoustic backbone of these fireside jams. The vinyl-popping details include the otherworldly voices of Devendra Banhart, Antony, and Joanna Newsom, the piano-led whirlpool of White Magic, and Six Organs of Admittance's finger picked Expressionist paintings. Wait 'til you hear how loopy our Next Steps get, too.

Really, now, what's going on here? On the one hand, we're hearing a painfully delicate duet between Mazzy Star frontwoman Hope Sandoval and Devendra Banhart bandmate Andy Cabic, the wandering star of Vetiver. On the other, we're caught in the undertow of Sir Richard Bishop's gun-slinging acoustic guitar and the precious poetry of freak folk's adopted godmother, Vashti Bunyan. Keep listening through the distorted, dusty lens of our Deep Cuts, and we'll see you on the other side.

Congratulations. You know your Devendra Banharts from your Joanna Newsoms. Which means you're ready to reach a point of no return with some of the most psychedelic fringe music freak folk has to offer beyond its inherent bearded-and-battered guitar imagery. Scene icons Charalambides drift on by like cumulus clouds, Entrance rips and roars like the exhumed corpses of Morrison and Hendrix, Sunburned Hand of the Man struggles through a rogue radio dial, and Current 93 is as gothic as a cathedral with stained glass windows and creaky church pews.

"If you were to ask me how I feel about the term freak folk," scene figurehead Devendra Banhart once said in a New York Times interview, "It's cool — you have to call it something — but we didn't name it…We just call it the Family." And what a family reunion it'd be 20 years from now. As beautiful as they are broken, and as delicate as they are damaged, the collected cuts of Espers, Joanna Newsom, CocoRosie, Animal Collective, and their constantly growing group of contemporaries are songs you savor, hand-selected from albums you adore like a lost love or brittle crush — tracks that you tune in (and out) to, so that the worries of the world can melt away, if only for an hour or two.