Espers

Acid-folk maestro Greg Weeks' psychedelic trio Espers -- with Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons -- has created a delicate and blissfully unsettling debut. Weeks' autoharp on tracks like "Flowery Noontide" conjures images of home-baked '60s folk played by sincere and optimistic flower children and dark and dreamy drifters. "Meadow," similarly, recalls the sunshine and doom chamber pop and subtle acoustic guitar of Donovan on "Susan on the West Coast Waiting" or "Atlantis," or Fairport Convention. "Riding" could easily fit on the Super Furry Animals brilliant and catchy West Coast pop collection Phantom Power -- but then "Voices" is nearly as hazy and Far Eastern as Six Organs of Admittance, and "Hearts & Daggers" is over eight minutes of druggy, medieval-inspired British baroque noise. Espers' music is entirely incongruous with the trends of 2003-2004 -- from the devil-may-care rock of Jet and the Strokes, to the over-the-top, cosmic, and sexy wunder-metal of the Darkness. But you can't help but feel that Espers are onto something -- not quite the soft-is-the-new-loud irony of Belle & Sebastian, but a more sinister and trippy picture of a foreboding horizon in the midst of the most beautiful sunset. ~ Charles Spano