Disarming Space

During its early American renaissance, folk was considered a weapon to combat war and political bull honky: folk was, in many places, considered a sort of gun of ideas. The initial idea of American folk seemed to be a celebration of simplicity, directness, and grassroots independence: the idea that you can take your guitar and speak anywhere/anytime. With the evolution of tech (where simplicity does not necessarily mean “acoustic guitar”) and the massive expansion of the cultural conversation towards a global community (particularly in the US) to encompass a much wider social sphere, listeners can look to style and intention rather than instrument set-up. Folk is at once psychological and simple. It is conversational and personal, and in that sense, it is political and cerebral.

This mix is not made to lay a groundwork for a new definition of folk, rather, I wanted to create a vein here of musicians that use the power of speech, a conversation implied between musician and listener, to convey force and emotion in music. In the case of From Monuments to Masses and The Books, this conversation is crafted using sound clips, creating a more psychological effect. In Britain’s Protein Window and San Francisco's Enablers, the verse is an elegant, semi-narrative free form rich with undertones, and the chorus is a shimmering wall of distortion that the listener fills with her own thoughts and verse. In This Will Destroy You, the notable lack of lyrics creates a wide headspace and pacing towards a personal conversation for the listener (leading to perhaps the ultimate and incidental goal of these great musicians: listener revelation.)

Bill Callahan and Leonard Cohen have a consuming, immediate lyrical style that is stripped down so that the delivery and quantity of verse unfold layer after layer of subtext, a style mirrored in PW and the Enablers but with a post-modern buzz.

In Washington D.C.’s Weird War, lead singer Ian Svenonius playfully wields a powerful vocal style that is more speaking than singing. It’s engaging and slightly atonal, but also filled with jokey, sometimes throwaway lyrics that give listeners space to shout over, to drink over, to talk over. Perhaps this is the gift and evolution of past folk, not to be a gun of ideas and to sharpen the political opinion of groups as it once did, but to be a disarming space for individual expansion of identity and interpersonal armistice.

The Books - An Animated Description of Mr. Maps

From Monuments to Masses - Sharpshooter


Protein Window - Diptych Dipstych


This Will Destroy You - Freedom Blade

Weird War - Girls Like That

Enablers - Blown Realms & Stalled Explosions


Leonard Cohen - The Stranger Song