GIG: CASTANETS
Freak folk, anti-folk, neo-folk, psychedelic folk, naturalismo, whatever you want to call it, they won’t like it. “The term is f*3&ing lame!” exclaimed its erstwhile godfather, Devendra Banhart. Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste complained it comes with an image, “You have to have a beard and be Jesusy, if you know what I mean…” And the Castanets’ Ray Raposa, the lone gunman of the genre, says, “I’ll pretty much hang up on anyone who brings this up with any seriousness. It was never a ‘thing’ and I am baffled by its persistence.” (Strange, then, that his press declares him, the ‘Father of Freak Folk’?) For a bunch of soft-voiced song nerds who favour lo-fi guitar twangs overlaid with drone, they seem pretty antsy … maybe it’s the off-shoot of creating what music tastemaker Pitchfork declared to be, “A comforting, off-handedly pleasant atmosphere” (of Castanets’ In The Vines), and, “Like being cornered by a meteorologist whose wife has died.” (NME). Nothing like some nominal quibbling to appease the gods of rock and roll, right? Add to that Ray Raposa’s pervasive mythology as rider of the American midnight express, the Greyhound network, his history as a highschool dropout and a sonic sabbatical in the Nevada desert (from which album City of Refuge sprung) and you have a readymade audience of curiosity-piqued folk, willing to wade past the genre marshiness. And this Father of Somekinda Folk is heading down South for a night that he promises you’ll leave with, “Records? A date?” When pressed about how much his freewheeling creativity feeds into his Americana-infused folk, Raposa remains enigmatic. It’s, “Osmosis. Sneaks in like second hand smoke maybe. I don’t consider its effect, ill or otherwise. It’s all ‘do’.” Just whatever you ‘do’, don’t holler out anything about the ‘Freak Folk’ thing. He’s bound to shut down the sound system. And once you’ve heard a few strums of the Castanets’ latest midnight opus Texas Rose, the Thaw and the Beasts, you won’t want that.
Dec 27, from 5pm,The Excelsior Hotel, Foveaux St, Surry Hills, $12-15, stickytickets.com.au/2406
