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Vetiver Vetiver's press release describes their music as "dreamy, gentle songs that George Harrison would have written in some country garden". I'm not sure I like this comparison; Vetiver remind me more of a distinctly American and meandering Simon and Garfunkel if we're sticking to the 60s, but the garden image I can get behind. Each song of the new album 'Tight Knit' hangs like a perfect peach: soft, fuzzy, fragrant and still warm from the sun. Vetiver is San Francisco's Andy Cabic as songwriter and frontman plus various musical friends or, as he puts it, the different "hues in an ever-changing palette". And it's a rich palette: members of Vetiver have included Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Colm î C’os—ig (My Bloody Valentine), Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star) and Eric Johnson (The Shins) among many, many others. Cabic was busy in 2008, touring extensively around Europe and the US on the strength of Vetiver's 'Thing Of The Past', a cover-album of super-obscure musical gems. 2009 will be no less hectic for him - his calendar includes a premiere trip to the SxSW festival, production work on 'Godmother Of Freak Folk', Vashti Bunyan's forthcoming album, as well as a heap more touring, which this time will possibly bring Vetiver wafting toward our own shores. Cabic, however, seems to be anything but overwhelmed. "It doesn't feel like I've been busy," he muses. "I just keep playing with friends, and I love my bandmates, so it's fun." 'Tight Knit', Vetiver's fourth full-length album, continues in the group's folky impressionistic style, combining delicate and subtle arrangements, warm guitars, and gentle harmonies in an enveloping musical mist. The songs themselves are elegantly simple - almost any track from 'Tight Knit' would make a soothing lullaby. And I defy anyone to tell me that Everyday isn't as charming an example of the perfect love song as you'll find anywhere. It's so charming it should be trite, but somehow it's not. "It isn't so simple to sound so simple," Cadic explains, his soft voice as gentle on the telephone as in song. "It actually requires a lot of detail and work. But I think it suits my voice, and my playing, and that of my bandmates, so I try to keep my writing that way." Simple the songs might be, but 'Tight Knit' is a development on Vetiver's previous work. The songs themselves are stronger, and the arrangements reflect an evolving musicianship, making use of a wider instrumentation. 'Tight Knit' broadens from previous combinations of percussion, guitars, keyboards and strings to include brass, but Cabic is blithely flippant about the decision. "My producer's neighbour is a horn player - actually he's the trumpet player for the Eagles when they tour - so we just walked over to his house and asked if he wanted to help." Whilst I doubt anyone would call Cabic's songs transparent, and they're in no way narrative-driven, to me there's a distinct storytelling aroma to the lyrics that makes these songs easy to relate to. As it turns out I'm right... and wrong. Cabic is articulate but coy, and refuses to be drawn on the content of his songs, conceding little more than that some of his writing is more personal and some is purely imaginary. "I try to phrase things in a way that feels universal for anyone," he says, guardedly. "I let the song have its own life." I've described Vetiver's music here as well as I can, but I've been deliberately floral and vague, in a vain attempt to capture the Vetiver sound in words. I've called the music 'charming', I've used perfumed vocabulary to allude to the fact that vetiver is, in fact, a fragrant grass, and hell, I've even compared the songs to peaches. Fortunately, when pressed to describe 'Tight Knit', Cabic, for all his ability to write beautifully opaque lyrics, speaks more clearly. "I think it's a brighter record than the last couple were; I think it's more dynamic, with richer arrangements, and... I think I sing better on it, but I think you need to have a little dialogue with it. I don't know if it's clear how it's all tied together and nuanced in one listen - I think it's a subtle record. 'Tight Knit' started out more like a collection of songs - they seem to actually work well together but I wasn't always sure that was going to be the case. I hoped titling it 'Tight Knit' would give it that aura." Emily Heylen 'Tight Knit' it out now through Stomp. |