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ESPERS - THE WEED TREE
- NEW RELEASEARTIST:
TITLE:
The Weed Tree
LABEL:
CATNO:
DC736
STYLE:
FORMAT:
Vinyl record
DESCRIPTION:
205 Psychedelic Rock & Folk Rock LP From 2005 Repressed for the New Generation
The second Espers album, ‘The Weed Tree’, was released in 2005. It was a nearly inevitable endeavour for the group, made almost entirely of cover material but the traditional folk songs - ‘Rosemary Lane’ and ‘Black Is the Color’ - were paired with songs by Nico, Michael Hurley and even Blue Oyster Cult, making for an oblique run through eclectic aspects of the past that succeeded due to Espers’ thorough re-imagining of the material in their own image. The addition of current members Helen Espvall on cello and Otto Hauser on drums and percussion upped the alchemy of the band to its most potent, making music that drew from tradition but making it new at the same time.
Espers, existing in between places, were a part of a flow of ideation that has as much to do with revelations from the 70s or 60s - with all the decades of the last century, really - as it does with the current expressions in favour of selfhood and safety that are struggled over today. Their music has retained a mysterious, unknowable vitality that, in the name of their original intention, continues to express Espers’ individualism, optimism and deeply empathetic soul. ‘II’ and ‘III’ continued the journey through 2009, after which Espers quietly dispersed. Since then, ‘Espers’ and ‘The Weed Tree’ went out of print and have stayed away for some years now. New vinyl and CD editions will surely be welcomed by the members of the burgeoning listening community that continues to evolve in the spirit and image of the communities that preceded them. And the circle remains unbroken.
The second Espers album, ‘The Weed Tree’, was released in 2005. It was a nearly inevitable endeavour for the group, made almost entirely of cover material but the traditional folk songs - ‘Rosemary Lane’ and ‘Black Is the Color’ - were paired with songs by Nico, Michael Hurley and even Blue Oyster Cult, making for an oblique run through eclectic aspects of the past that succeeded due to Espers’ thorough re-imagining of the material in their own image. The addition of current members Helen Espvall on cello and Otto Hauser on drums and percussion upped the alchemy of the band to its most potent, making music that drew from tradition but making it new at the same time.
Espers, existing in between places, were a part of a flow of ideation that has as much to do with revelations from the 70s or 60s - with all the decades of the last century, really - as it does with the current expressions in favour of selfhood and safety that are struggled over today. Their music has retained a mysterious, unknowable vitality that, in the name of their original intention, continues to express Espers’ individualism, optimism and deeply empathetic soul. ‘II’ and ‘III’ continued the journey through 2009, after which Espers quietly dispersed. Since then, ‘Espers’ and ‘The Weed Tree’ went out of print and have stayed away for some years now. New vinyl and CD editions will surely be welcomed by the members of the burgeoning listening community that continues to evolve in the spirit and image of the communities that preceded them. And the circle remains unbroken.
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£22.49
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Last FM Information on Espers
Please note the information is done on a artist keyword match and data is provided by LastFM.
Espers is a psychedelic folk band from Philadelphia, PA, United States. They formed in 2002 as a trio of singer-songwriter Greg Weeks, Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons but later expanded to a sextet including Otto Hauser, Helena Espvall and Chris Smith. Their music is reminiscent of late-sixties British folk such as that of Fairport Convention, Pentangle and The Incredible String Band as well as many contemporary folk acts such as Six Organs of Admittance, Marissa Nadler and Nick Castro and as such their work is often lumped in with the so-called New Weird America movement or naturalismo as Devendra Banhart preferred to coin it in 2006. Most of the band's members have also featured on recordings by a number of other folk artists, old and new, such as Nick Castro and Vashti Bunyan and as a result have become an important part of the psych-folk revival.
They released their self-titled debut, "Espers", in 2004 to much acclaim and followed that with an album of cover songs, "The Weed Tree", in 2005. This release featured the band's versions of songs by artists as diverse as Nico, The Durutti Column and Blue Oyster Cult. In 2006 the band released their third full-length "Espers II" on Drag City Records.
Their fourth album, "Espers III", was released on October 20, 2009. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.