The music of this last decade – the aughts – will likely be remembered most for the resurgences in new wave and post-punk that fueled the sounds of many of today's best new bands.
Groups like The Killers and Franz Ferdinand crossed over from hipster playlists into the mainstream, establishing the wide-angle view of what the cool kids were listening to in the 2000s. Less commercialized, but more extraordinary, has been the infiltration of folk music back into the daily rotation of the music intelligentsia. In recent years, we have seen the flowering of a form that had been marginalized for far too long.
After the crackling dawn of punk rock back in 1977, folk music was mostly cast aside as the type of wimpy, outmoded stuff that only Baby Boomers were into. This sentiment began to slowly erode in the 1990s. With their popular Unplugged series, MTV helped change the tide of anti-folk sentiment. Though many of these performances were half-baked, Nirvana's captivating appearance (and subsequent album) reprogrammed some key neurons in the grunge-conditioned brains of alternative fans: "Hey, maybe louder isn't necessarily better." Moreover, the rise of alt-country truly sowed the first seeds of folk music's revival, even if the strums on acoustic guitars were often crowded out by guitar solos, drums, and Band-indebted organ swells. Though Uncle Tupelo is usually regarded as the genre's epicenter, other acts like Palace, Smog, and (improbably) Swans were responsible for the birthing of indie folk in the 2000s.
No. 6 Bill Callahan - "Vessel in Vain" from Retread Sessions on Vimeo.
In 1999, croaky surrealist singer-songwriter Will Oldham jettisoned his string of Palace-themed pseudonyms and settled on the new moniker Bonnie "Prince" Billy, establishing a sonic identity centered more on the paired-down storytelling accompaniment of acoustic guitar and voice. Throughout the 2000s, this shift bore out with increasingly folk-centered albums, like Master and Everyone (2003) and The Letting Go (2006). Bill Callahan, the man behind Smog, also dropped his former nom de musique and elected to go by his given name. His first "solo" album was 2007's Woke on a Whaleheart, but this followed three 2000s Smog LPs that featured a far more stripped-down approach. Even when recording as Smog, though, Callahan's ambling style of indie Americana was blazing a trail toward the coming 21st century folk aesthetic.
Perhaps the bravest bushwhacker toward this new era was among the genre's least likely proponents, former Swans frontman Michael Gira. After 15 years of fronting an avant-garde noise art group, Gira returned in 1999 with Angels of Light. Though no less compromising in his left field approach to making music, Gira's new largely acoustic outfit is much easier on the ears. Many of the act's compositions are reminiscent of the murder ballads popular a century before, but with a decidedly contemporary feel. Strange textures creep in around the serpentine curves of a typical Angels of Light track.
All of these artists helped to create a climate in which a new era of folk music could thrive, while occasionally providing a direct influence over the genre's biggest movement of the 2000s. Alternately labeled freak folk, psych folk, and Naturalismo, a loose collective of neo-hippie kids emerged mid-decade to captivate the indie community. This began in 2004, when the scene's bearded leader, Devendra Banhart, curated the Golden Apples of the Sun compilation. This featured many of contemporary indie folk's finest acts: Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, and Six Organs of Admittance, as well as the oft-acknowledged godmother of this odd new folk, Vashti Bunyan, who duets with Banhart on one cut.
Joanna Newsom - The Book of Right-on from benjamin & stefan ramirez perez on Vimeo.
All of these acts had been toiling in obscurity for at least a couple of years prior to the emergence of this highly touted sampler, but 2004 was their major coming out party. That year, Newsom issued her official debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender. With her nimble harp playing and elastic, girlish voice, Newsom presented a unique take on folk music, adding a Ren fair flair to modern indie folk. Iron & Wine – the vehicle for singer-songwriter Sam Beam – broke out that year, too, with the deeply lovely Our Endless Numbered Days, an endlessly enjoyable album of finger-picked guitar and whispery voice. 2004 was also a banner year for the scene's master of ceremonies, Devendra Banhart. He issued two very strong LPs that year, Rejoicing in the Hands and Niño Rojo, both of which were released by Gira's Young God Records. These LPs set the singer's tremulous singing to winding, mid-fi psych folk tunes that sometimes betray Banhart's passion for the Brazilian Tropicalia (or, Tropicalismo) movement. It was this style that inspired him to coin the term Naturlismo as a corrective to the maybe pejorative sounding freak folk label.
A whole crop of other oddball acts sometimes placed beneath this same umbrella also came of age in 2004. Weird popsters Animal Collective issued their highly praised Sung Tongs, strange sister duo CocoRosie put out La Maison de Mon Rêve, and Sufjan Stevens took time out from recording his odes to American states to release the Christian-themed folk album Seven Swans. One could argue for or against the inclusion of any of these releases in a list of indie folk records, but they all bear a similar approach and feel, marking a musical return to more earthly pleasures while also displaying a forward-looking interest in experimenting with sound in new ways.
In 2005, Devendra Banhart issued his best album, the sumptuous and expansive Cripple Crow. Issued by XL, the sound is more professional, but far from over-produced. Rather, the material shines through that much better. Amazingly, Banhart's de facto mentor, Vashti Bunyan, emerged from obscurity that same year to issue her first album since 1970, the beautiful Lookaftering. Also, after years of toiling in obscurity, guitarist Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance signed to Drag City and released The School of the Flower, a wondrous series of psychedelic instrumental excursions.
Joanna Newsom, meanwhile, had become involved with Bill Callahan, who turned her onto arranger and producer Van Dyke Parks. This initiated a collaboration between Newsom and Parks, with the latter scoring orchestrations to embellish the former's voice-and-harp recordings. The result is 2006's spellbinding masterpiece, Ys. Comprised of five songs ranging from seven to 17 minutes, the album pairs intricate, image-ridden poetry with mellifluous plucking and soaring strings. Earning rave reviews and a UK #41 chart peak, it is the ultimate expression of 2000s indie folk.
But it was not the last, of course. The genre has continued to evolve in many ways. In 2007, Iron & Wine moved in a new direction, with Sam Beam adding a full band on The Shepherd's Dog, another excellent album that also reached a remarkably high #24 on the Billboard 200. Banhart, on the other hand, missed the mark that same year with the somewhat lackluster Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Mountain.
alela diane | "dry grass & shadows" from gorillavsbear.net on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, a new guard of indie folk artists was on the rise. Alela Diane turned heads with 2006's The Pirate's Gospel and earned many positive reviews for its 2009 successor, To Be Still. With this record, the indie folk scene seemed to come full circle, shedding its freakiness and returning to a purer form, more obviously indebted to the 1960s Greenwich Village scene than the more obscure vinyl excavations (The Incredible String Band, Karen Dalton) that enthralled the tribe that immediately preceded Diane. Traveling a completely different path is Helena Costas, a fanciful singer-songwriter who collaborates with psych-soul mastermind Danger Mouse under the name Joker's Daughter. The duo's 2009 debut, The Last Laugh, marries the eccentricities of an artist like Joanna Newsom with the electronica-tinged, hemmed-in production Danger Mouse has employed so neatly as the music-making half of Gnarls Barkley. The newcomer most true to the 2000s indie folk template is Bon Iver, the name under which Justin Vernon records his melancholic tunes. His high, plaintive tenor perfectly evokes the frigid Wisconsin atmosphere where he recorded his glorious first full-length, For Emma, Forever Ago (self-released in 2007, Jagjaguwar spread the word far and wide in 2008).
Justin Vernon has picked up the meandering thread left by Angels of Light and Iron & Wine. He and his fellow folkies will hopefully carry forward their wonderfully evocative folk forms into the next decade. The cool kids should keep picking at their acoustic guitars and even plucking at their harps. This decade has proven that folk music ain't just for old fogies. It's a musical tradition with myriad avenues still waiting to be explored.
Recommended Indie Folk Albums:
Angels of Light: How I Loved You
Devendra Banhart: Cripple Crow
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Vashti Bunyan: Lookaftering
Alela Diane: To Be Still
Iron & Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days
Joanna Newsom: Ys
Six Organs of Admittance: The School of the Flower
