Arboretum – The Gathering – Thrill Jockey – THRILL257 - ****

Crawling out of Baltimore like a psychedelic slug, Arboretum play the modal chord progressions you'd find on Seventies British folk rock albums, and douse them in cyclical strangulated lead guitar noise, a stoner metal band gone native at Cropredy.

David Heumann's yearning vocals lie back in the mix, like a man straining to see something from the shore, and the band navigates a cover of Jimmy Webb's The Highwayman, dignity intact.
There's been folk rock before, but never folk-rawk, and as the flaxen fug of The Gathering achieves maximum penetration, one wonders why this particular hybrid has taken so long to bloom, because it's beautiful.

(20/3/11)