Artist: Birch Book
Title: Fortune & Folly
Label: Helmet Room Recordings
Format: CD
Catalog: VOLII
Price: 13.00 USD
About Fortune & Folly:
Recorded on San Juan Island off the rugged coasts of the Olympic Northwest, Fortune & Folly is the fitting second volume of Birch Book. Assuming the allegorical emblems of The Wheel of Fortune and The Traveling Fool, Fortune & Folly distill the introspections of a perennial rambler reckoning "the Bitter and the Bliss" of The Road Less Traveled. Drifting away from the overtly psychedelic, medieval, and soporific atmosphere which typified In Gowan Ring, B'ee displays a more organic, individualistic approach to songwriting. Fortune & Folly blends elements of idiosyncratic folk-pop and outcast-country with brooding layers of sound and sense, yielding a spectral ethereality in a captivating chiaroscuro thick with the visionary allusions of a haunted wanderer bent upon a mythic path....
Favorable comparisons are commonly drawn with classics such as Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake as well as contemporary "rural-folk" such as Will Oldham and Iron & Wine.
About Birch Book:
Variously labeled 'Wyrd', 'Psychedelic' or 'Avant Folk', In Gowan Ring extend roots into poetic-folk traditions while cultivating an inimitable, self-attuned writing style that prefigured the "New-Psyche-Folke" movement. As poet, pilgrim, progenitor of wyrd-folk and maestro of In Gowan Ring, Jon Michael B'eirth (otherwise B'ee) has developed a homespun sonic tapestry with peculiar richness of vision; recording over ten full length albums and performing throughout North America & Europe in veritable itinerant fashion amidst a dozen years against the grain. As well as composing the original material for Birch Book & In Gowan Ring, B'ee collects renditions of traditional songs and builds many of the acoustic instruments featured in performances and recordings such as the recent "lyre-guitar" & "leaf cittern." Though largely self-taught, he has didactically studied the music of the Trouvères and Troubadours, the counterpoint of the High Renaissance, and modern orchestration.
Track List:
- Birch Sap [2:11]
- New Song [4:22]
- Whisper in the Pine [3:47]
- Young Souls [3:38]
- New Joy [4:19]
- Diaspora [5:22]
- The Wandering Boy [3:22]
- Zephyr through Willows [4:48]
- Trip Goes On [7:17]
- The Carnival is Empty [4:13]
- Birch Sap [2:12]