The Wily Filipino

Your New Favorite Song.

One thing you wouldn't get from my listening profile on Audioscrobbler -- as you can see, it makes me look like a total Guided By Voices obsessive -- is the fact that only a few years ago I was a huge fan of John Zorn, Morton Feldman, Keiji Haino, Current 93, Coil... All bands / musicians / composers with big discographies and all, but none of which even show up on my list.

I also used to be a big fan of wyrdfolk, whatever that really means; I've always thought of it as dark, generally pagan-themed (or Christ-haunted), deep-woods inflected, guitar strumming. In general this has been expanded, I think, to include psych and prog elements here and there, as well as more "trad-folk;" thus, in a different light, artists as diverse as Devendra Banhart, Steeleye Span, the Carter Family, Linda Perhacs, Will Oldham, Vashti Bunyan, Ghost and Donovan would qualify. While principally English, think of Harry Smith's "old, weird America" and you'll know what I mean. (Yes, I know it's Greil Marcus' description of The Basement Tapes.)

The ultimate wyrdfolk album, in my opinion, would be Comus's First Utterance; if pressed for only a few more, I would name Paul Giovanni's soundtrack for The Wicker Man (though the killer opening track is missing from the U.S. version), The Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, C.O.B.'s Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, Stone Angel's Stone Angel, and perhaps, from a different time period, Current 93's Earth Covers Earth and Ghost's Lamarabirabi.

Which brings me to today's mp3 download, one of my favorite songs ever and, in my opinion, one of the quintessential "wyrdfolk" tracks: Trees' "The Garden of Jane Delawney," the title track of their 1970 debut album. (Their follow-up album, On the Shore, is the more solid work, however, complete with a creepy Hipgnosis cover.)

I have no idea what the song's about -- there are references to "a fire [that] will consume your hair," eyes turning to glass, the tears of the willow "drown[ing] you as you sleep," a "bloodfilled stream" -- but the song conjures, at least for me, an aura of quiet, overpowering, supernatural dread.

Hear it (5.93 mb).

[Update: The lyrics to the song -- apparently it's been covered by some goth-folk band named All About Eve.

And a bonus hay(na)ku, inspired by a comment on the song on the Bruton Town mailing list:

Like
a ghost
passing through you]

Posted by the wily filipino at May 17, 2004 10:08 AM