Birch Book Fortune And Folly Rar

Birch Book, Fortune & Folly (Helmet Room, 2007) Sometimes it sucks to be a reviewer. You get these packages in the mail and you like the music, but when you go to.

Fortune & Folly's CD casing is a marvel of low-tech ingenuity, consisting of no more than a folded piece of brown cardboard, green notes, and a plastic button to stick the CD on. With this first impression, the listener should be excused if she anticipates old-time folk music celebrating pig farming and other joys of rural living. But the opening piece, a mellow instrumental titled 'Birch Sap,' convinces the listener otherwise: Birch Book must be some kind of new age artist, and the CD cover must have something to do with saving the environment. But alas, this impression is equally wrong, as fans of Birch Book's self-titled debut already know. In reality, Birch Book concocts a mixture that might be described as psychedelic folk with roots connected to singer/songwriters like Nick Drake.

The layered arrangements of acoustic and electric instruments create an intriguing sound on 'New Joy' and 'Diaspora,' while the vocals -- as on 'The Wondering Boy' -- possess a quiet, breathy presence. For those indoctrinated to Birch Book's charms, Fortune & Folly's songs -- all played at super slow tempos -- are hypnotic and evocative; for others, the songs easily segue into one another, fade into the background, and, thanks to the sluggish pacing, are somewhat depressing. Lankford, Jr.

Rambles.NET: Birch Book, Fortune & Folly Birch Book, Fortune & Folly (Helmet Room, 2007) Sometimes it sucks to be a reviewer. You get these packages in the mail and you like the music, but when you go to write up a review you discover the musician or publicist who sent it to you saved a few bucks by shipping a barebones promo disc and little more. With Fortune & Folly, I got a track list and an overly wordy warning not to resell the disc for fun or profit. Memory map licence keygen free online. The rest I found on the Internet, which is one of the tools it now seems impossible to do without. (I never did find the lyrics, which are much more valuable to reviewers than most musicians and publicists seem to realize.) Anyway, Birch Book is for the most part a guy named B'ee, who sings (sometimes in layers) and plays guitar and harmonica. There's a little bit of vocal and instrumental help on the recording -- Seth Eames on telecaster, Annabel Lee on viola, Moss and Victoria on backing vocals -- but this is largely a one-man show. And it's good stuff, described by B'ee as psychedelic folk, which is as good a label as any.

His vocal style reminds me a lot of Donovan on his mellowest days; it didn't take much 'Net searching to see that's been a fairly common comparison. When I first slipped the disc into my stereo, I initially thought it was pretty dull stuff. But my subconscious mind, sometimes wiser than me, dug its hooks into the sound, and some time later I noticed I'd hit the 'repeat' button at least once and was softly humming along with melodies I didn't realize I knew. The wordless sixth track, 'Diaspora,' was the first to really suck me in with a bass-layered atmosphere of dreaming wonder; from that point on, and on successive replays, I found myself paying more and more attention to B'ee's music. B'ee's voice and guitar playing both draw from the folk-minstrel tradition, not so much melancholic as reflective and, just maybe, a little tired from the road. The music drifts softly, but never aimlessly, and it carries deceptive strength in its wandering harmonies. There are albums that walk right up and smack you on the forehead, demanding your attention.

Fortune & Folly is more subtle, and more pervasive; once it had my attention, it didn't want to let go. [ ] Rambles.NET review by 12 May 2007.