Arborea: Arborea
Fire Museum Records

Arborea: House of Sticks
Fire Museum Records

A thorough impression of Arborea's folk sound is gleaned from these three recordings, two of them group releases by Shanti and Buck Curran and the third a compilation project curated and produced by Buck and overseen by the Maine-based husband-and-wife duo. Arborea deftly incorporates into its earthy and ethereal music multiple strands—ancient blues, Appalachian folk music, English madrigals, psychedelic folk—without betraying a fundamental allegiance to a traditional folk music sound.

Arborea's second, self-titled album exudes more of a swampy, backwater blues-folk feel than does its successor. Instrumentals and vocal songs appear, with the spectral, Paris, Texas-styled “Plains of Macedonia” and ruminative acoustic guitar setting “Leaves Among the Ruins” memorable examples of the former; such pieces never come across as space-fillers either but material that's as central to Arborea's persona as its vocal songs. The songs and arrangements (for vocals, guitars, banjo, violin, and percussion) are key but just as critical to the group's brooding sound is Shanti's crystal-clear vocalizing. In “Forewarned,” a setting of haunted mysticism, Shanti's multi-tracked voice weaves hypnotically over a sparse backing of bells and guitar pedal point drone. Backwards phasing treatments at the start of “Black Mountain Road” show the Currans aren't averse to sprinkling modern effects across their tunes, but it's the haunting vocal melodies and cello colourations (by Espers' Helena Espvall) that render the song memorable; Espvall's cello playing in “Red Bird” also deepens the music's intoxicating effect. With vocals and guitar supplemented by a violin's saw, “Seadrift”  is otherwise a stripped-down folk-blues that could have been recorded a hundred years ago, so timeless is its feel, while the slide guitar playing in the drone meditation “Ides of March” likewise gives the material an ancient feel.

If House of Sticks feels slightly less haunted than the self-titled collection, it's no less satisfying—in fact, the songwriting is, if anything, even a bit stronger and the group's delivery more assured. Though nominally Arborea's third album, it actually pairs remastered versions of tracks from the debut outing Wayfaring Summer with several new songs recorded between 2007 and 2008. That an old-school vibe comes through isn't surprising, given that House of Sticks was recorded in a hunting cabin located in the hills of Western Maine and in the parlor of a 160-year-old cottage. Shanti's voice ebbs and flows in a manner appropriate to “River and Rapids” while Buck's repeating banjo patterns provide a stable foundation for the vocal and a strings interjection. Even more timeless is the incantatory “Beirut,” which pairs Shanti's serenading vocal (“Won't you take me down / To New York town”) with crystalline guitar playing. “Alligator” revisits the back-home folk-blues of the self-titled album, while the album's most entrancing song is “Dance, Sing, Fight” whose gentle ambiance is belied by troubling subject matter (“How can we dance when our earth is burning?”). Nevertheless, when the Bucks chant “Black… beige … white / Green … red … blue” (“white” a mere whisper) against a hypnotic bed of dulcimer and slide guitar, the effect is spellbinding. Lovely too is “In the Tall Grass” which ends the album with six serenading minutes of harmonium, acoustic guitar, bells, and Shanti's murmur. Like its predecessor, House of Sticks is free of flab—its eight songs total thirty-three minutes—and leaves the listener wanting more.

February 2010