P.G. Six - Murmurs & Whispers (2023)
Review:
In a fairer world, Pat Gubler would be psych-folk royalty. His first two albums as P.G. Six – 2001’s Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites and The Well of Memory (2004) – deserve to be considered cornerstones of the New Weird America movement. Their softly-lit, slightly strange folk, with its nods to the trippier side of English folk-rock, was easily the equal of anything by Devendra Banhart or Six Organs of Admittance. But for reasons unknown, these two genuinely great records never quite reached the audience they deserved. Gubler has remained something of a peripheral figure ever since, beloved by those who know his music and contributing to a wide array of acts on the fringes of folk and psych without ever quite achieving the popularity of some of his Drag City peers. Perhaps it’s a matter of timing. Gubler has never rushed things, and Murmurs & Whispers is the first P.G. Six album in twelve years. But while such a long gestation might not be the best thing for sales or media coverage, it has allowed Gubler to amass a collection of songs of formidable quality and well-honed artistry, and on Drag City – home to Joanna Newsom, another artist not known for rushing things – he has found the perfect home. Opener Leaves immediately transports us back to those heady days of the early 2000s. The restrained vocal delivery, enigmatic lyrics and subtle use of modern electronics are all present and correct. Like all the best weird folk, it is, from the outset, both eerie and comforting: the feeling it evokes is perhaps a relative of nostalgia or a kind of homesickness for a place that only exists in the imagination. The most significant difference between this and previous P.G. Six albums is Gubler’s reliance on the harp. At times – such as the alternately uplifting and weary I Have Known Love – it augments an acoustic guitar or lays the groundwork for a surprise interjection of keyboard or hurdy-gurdy. On I Don’t Want To Be Free, the harp is insistent, creating a kind of lattice of repetition, a symbolic musical prison. A passage of flighty free-jazz brass provides an eloquent counterpoint. By and large, the effect of the harp is one of layering but not necessarily of thickness – there has always been an airy quality to P.G. Six, and this is still the case. Even in the darkest songs, like the droney Tell Me Death, there is a lightness, and the lapidary, complex prettiness of the harp only heightens the effect. The drone features prominently again in I Have A House, a slow-burning but vivid tale with multi-tracked vocals reminiscent of Richard Youngs. Here, it puts down a platform on which a burned-out electric guitar solo can build. Just Begun is a springier affair, a jaunty melody punctuated by renaissance fair recorders; it brilliantly conjures both sixties Brit-folk and some idealised musical past that never actually happened. This kind of doubling gives an odd, disjointed sensibility to the song that counters any possible tweeness. The brief Barley Wine draws more from the American folk tradition but has a similar melodic suggestiveness as well as the surprise of a singalong chorus. Meandering adds soft swashes of studio noise to a fluid electric guitar instrumental, while the short final track, Foggy Hill, is a Donovan-esque ditty with shades of jazz thrown in for good measure. Although there have only been six P.G. Six albums over a twenty-two-year period, that comparatively small body of work nonetheless provides a compelling, consistent and, in a way, definitive snapshot of the psych-folk genre. Rather than an outlier, Gubler is a founding father who, along with the likes of Will Oldham and Ben Chasny, is keeping the New Weird America flame alive. Those of us lucky enough to have been in at the start will always consume anything he releases with relish, but Murmurs & Whispers also works as a starting point for the uninitiated. It is as good as anything he has released over those two-and-a-bit decades: a nuanced, enthralling work from a brilliant songwriter who seems to be hitting another career peak. — by Thomas Blake / folkradio.co.uk
Track List:
01 - Leaves
02 - I Have Known Love
03 - Tell Me Death
04 - I Have a House
05 - Just Begun
06 - Barley Wine
07 - Meandering
08 - I Don't Want To Be Free
09 - Foggy Hill
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, folk-rock
Country: New York, New York, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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