Thursday, September 30, 2010

Vetiver - Tight Knit

Release Date: February 17, 2009

★★★★★ Tracks:

Through the Front Door





Gone are the woodsy, fall sounds of Vetiver. The cellos and violins are silent. The guest collaborations from Banhart, Newsom and others are missing. This time around Andy Cabric elicits the warm tones of summer to try and craft a more inviting album. They add percussion to nearly every track, and experiment with electric guitars. The songwriting is more pop-oriented, as songs like “Sister” and “More of This” will leave you forgetting you are listening to a folk outfit. And while Tight Knit succeeds in being much more accessible than their debut, it’s also more generic. There isn’t much variance between what's here and what most alternative-folk enthusiasts already have in their libraries: “Rolling Sea” brings early Ryan Adams to mind, “Everyday” should appeal to Badly Drawn Boy fans, and “On the Other Side” sounds like a song produced by the plethora of current Calexico-style country rockers you've already heard. There is one song I’ll be sure to keep however, and although “Through the Front Door” could fit snugly on Beck’s Sea Change, I just can’t get past how damn gorgeous it is.

No comments:

Post a Comment