The North Sea - Exquisite Idols (2007)

Genre: Psych Folk
Label: Type (UK)

Similar Artists: Metthew de Gennaro

The first 'proper' album from free-folk's international man of mystery Brad Rose. The Tulsa resident managed to peel himself away from Ugly Betty re-runs for long enough to record eight skewed slices of sing-along outsider pop. Get slightly drunk, and enjoy...

Exquisite Idols hovers somewhere between drone, folk, free improv and a sort of shattered Americana. On the release, he mixes field recordings, guitars, occasional vocals, banjo, and loads of clanging percussion and hazy washes. The space it inhabits is somewhere between the scratchy under-the-bridge folk of a group like The Blithe Sons and the reverb-drenched Songs Of Green Pheasant. Most of all, though, it doesn't take the paths that you quite expect, playing out with a series of passages that feel organic and loose, as if written deep in the woods somewhere.

See this post for another The North Sea album.

Tracklisting

1. Eternal Birds 
   
2. Guiwenneth Of The Green Grass 
   
3. We Conquered The Golden Age 
   
4. Take It From Me Brother Moses 
   
5. Cover Me With Knives 
   
6. Children Of The Ashes 
   
7. And Then The Solstice Disappeared 
   
8. Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestess 

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