Milkweed – Milkweed Sings Carols
Independent – 10 December 2021
The debut winter-themed EP by Milkweed is something of an outlier. At a time when folk music is often, for better or for worse, a highly polished form (social media awareness, natty packaging, slick production), they take a very different route. Their promotional material is a lesson in intriguing obscurantism. They live and record on a narrowboat. Their press photos show the duo’s faces covered with cartoonish, photoshopped satanic masks. No personal details are given. A Google search for “Milkweed Sings Carols!” yields no results. And their music is deliberately frayed: part-improvised one-take recordings of four of the least well-known carols you are ever likely to hear, as well as a cover, from memory, of an unrecorded song by Minneapolis band Wizard Baby (who no longer seem to exist).
Stylistically there is some similarity to the slacker end of the early 2000s anti-folk and freak-folk movements and their combination of anti-virtuosity, hyper-creativity and inherent weirdness. The EP’s opening track, Gods Of The Heathens (an old basque folk carol), combines old-timey banjo picking with background creaks, jingling bells and a Jean Ritchie-esque vocal. At under a minute, it is like a blast of cold air, but it provides a template for what is to come. The Gornal Nail Maker’s Carol advances with an almost hypnotic single-mindedness, borne along by handclaps with a background of enigmatic squeaks and plucks; it revels in its DIY aesthetic.
When Joseph Wedded Was, an uncanny melody married to a subtle drone, goes even further into weird folk territory while also giving a nod to some of the more unconventional British folk bands from Pentangle to The Owl Service. Generally speaking though, the sound is indebted to an American style of folk music: the brevity of the songs and their endearing clutter makes you think of bands like Tinyfolk, while their forays into more ethereal territory mean they wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the influential 2004 Golden Apples Of The Sun compilation alongside Joanna Newsom and Diane Cluck.
The most ambitious track, Stars And Hills Are Hoary (another song from the Basque carol book, collected by Sir Richard R. Terry), is slow and impressionistic, much longer than anything else here, full of distorted licks of electric guitar and enigmatic lyrics. It is genuinely experimental, fresh-sounding. The vocals hint at enchantment and incantation, while the music has an eerie and barely-contained wildness. Closer Jesus Is (the Wizard Baby cover) is another bells-and-handclaps chant, irresistibly catchy, extremely simple and inexplicably alluring.
Everything we know about Milkweed so far is contained within these five songs (and three other digital singles – hear one below), but their mystery is part of their appeal. They seem intent on reviving the more outlandish, eccentric traditions of folk music, where old and new religions intermingle and where strange, bewitching sounds proliferate. This can only be a good thing.
Milkweed Sing Carols
- Gods of the heathens
- The Gornal Nailmakers’ Carol
- When Josepg Wedded Was
- Stars and Hills are Hoary
- Jesus Is
Lamkin single (available on streaming services)
Their music will be featured in an upcoming show on Folk Radio.