LISA O PIU

Following releases of a single in 2008 and both a live and a full-length album the following year, apparently Lisa o Piu felt the need to throw an EP into the mix. While their label refers to 'Behind the Bend' as a "mini-album", it's less-than thirty minute duration sounds like an EP to me, regardless of label.

Musically the band manages to show some new moves, although the album is not consistent and there are a couple tracks that simply perpetuate the (mostly acoustic) lazy psych folk vibe that characterized about half of their original studio release.

The band wisely opened with "Was it the Moon", an earthy number that meanders along with no more energy or direction than any other psych-folk song. But there are subtle improvements over the band's early work, beginning with more well-enunciated vocals and overdubs with better sound separation as well. The casual and complementary placement of zither, violin, clarinet and acoustic strumming arrangements give this mellow tune a more distinctive character than most of what the band had recorded prior.

It doesn't take long to drop back into old habits though, with the instrumentation of "Simplicity" being an example of just that, although Lisa Isaksson's vocals once again show she has studied a few Kate Bush albums in her young life. "Dream of Goats" is basically more of the same, though the overall sound reminds me considerably of Mellow Candle circa the early seventies.

Following a brief zither recital titled "World Falling Down", the band launches into their most ambitious effort to-date, at least in terms of length and complexity. The twelve minute "Child of Trees" opens with a soothing instrumental passage consisting of acoustic guitar, harp, glockenspiel, piano and a touch of chimes before a brief but sensual clarinet transition introduces Isaksson's vocal recitation. Structurally this is the same sort of stuff the band has been making for a few years, but the song takes an interesting sort of almost post rock-like turn with a tonal fadeout before reconvening behind the glock, plucky guitar and eventually an extended guitar/sitar combination accented by mellotron bleating, chimes and random cymbals. The whole thing works quite well, especially when Isaksson picks up her flute and joins the fray. She resumes singing in the last couple of minutes, bringing the composition mostly back to where it began in the fading few seconds. This is one I would love to see performed in an intimate live setting.

Carrying on with more of a slight post-rock feel, the band closes with "Gong for Hours (Jupiter's Under the Moon)", a song that takes almost a minute to get going and, when it does get going, takes shape with some sort of drone instrument and just a touch of feedback, chimes, a gong of some sort and finally a fadeout, all without actually going much of anywhere. Not the most original or ambitious song, but a decent enough follow-on to the folksy flight of the prior tune.

I wish the band had taken the time to put together enough new material for a full-length album, but what they did manage to record is decent, though except for "Was it the Moon" and "Child of Trees" most of what's here is not noteworthy. I'm going to say this is a three star effort anyway, though not quite to the level of either of their 2009 releases which I would recommend as a starting point for those not familiar with the group's music.

peace

Lisa o Piu's debut studio album 'When This Was the Future' released to mixed reviews in 2009. On the one hand some critics and fans praised the reverence and enthusiasm with which the band embraced a psych folk tradition that began in the sixties with groups like the Incredible String Band and was drowned out with the emergence of FM radio and louder electric music as the seventies wore on. Other reviewers panned the band for what they perceived as a pastiche approach that centered more on trying to imitate their parents' record collections than on producing something new and innovative. Both are probably correct to a certain extent, but in the end music is all about personal taste and preference anyway so que sera sera.

There really should be no argument though that bandleader Lisa Isaksson is a talented songwriter and a decent musician, and with this initial studio release she and her band mates at a minimum succeeded in adding yet another album on a pile of archetypical psych folk recordings that has been slowly growing since Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer had their fateful meeting with the upstart American producer Joe Boyd way back in 1965. On that point Piu will live on as at least a side note of psych folk history no matter what they do from this point forward.

Isaksson has been compared to the American Linda Perhacs in both her lyrical and vocal approach, and that assessment is for the most part a fair one. Both wove poetic lyrical passages that varied between introspective and abstract, into mostly languid, highly acoustic compositions. Piu have the advantage of nearly forty years on Perhacs though, and have clearly spun more than a few classic psych folk recordings to give them inspiration. Perhacs was an original with little to guide her back in the dawn of the seventies decade. Piu also don't shy away from a little AC current, weaving in bits of electric guitar and bass and plenty of studio tinkering along with the requisite folk tools such as acoustic guitar, flute, glockenspiel, violin, harp and zither. There are bits of mellotron here and there as well, although I'm assuming this is likely because the studio happened to have one more than it is a mainstay of the group's sound.

All compositions are originals, with the opening "Cinnamon Sea" serving notice at the outset that anyone looking for something other than a traditionalist reading of psych folk should either adjust their expectations or look elsewhere. The basis of the song is a laconic acoustic guitar riff that gets swallowed at times by layers of spacey vocals and luscious flute passages. I'm going out on a limb by stating that Ms. Isaksson's vocals remind me at times of Kate Bush. Before readers gasp and guffaw I'll caveat that by saying Isaksson hasn't the range, the imagination or the star power of Ms. Bush, but there are the occasional vocal phrasing or instrumental transition that hearken back to some of Bush's finer eighties material. This is most noticeable on "The Party" and "Two", both Isaksson compositions that consist of an almost theatrical instrumental arrangement that seem to serve little purpose other than to act as a stage from which Ms. Isaksson ascends to offer her vocal finery. "The Party" is an almost maddeningly mellow tune, but vocally this may be the best on the album, while "Two" is at comparatively sprightly and bright, with Isaksson indulging in some of the same sort of vocal overdubbing and effects that Bush was also wont to do in her day.

The band has a few weak spots that may become troubling in the future though. While nearly all the lyrics and arrangements were penned by Isaksson, there are two tracks where she had some help (guitarist David Svedmyr on "Älvdans vid Kolarkojan" and fellow Swedish folkster Jennie Ståbis on "Forest Echo"). This is a bit concerning because those are also two of the weaker tracks on the album, particularly the interaction between the vocalists and the instrumentation, which is both cases feels just slightly awkward. One has to wonder if the band can sustain themselves should Isaksson hit a bout of writer's block, or if personalities develop as a result of her dominant role in the group.

In any case this is a lovely album, although one should not expect to be swept away to any place other than where it purports to go, which is down a mossy forest path back to a time when there were still a lot of hippy artists running around barefoot and making naïve music that somehow still managed to find an audience. A bit tougher crowd today, but worth a listen if you are the sort who can still be distracted with a wave of nostalgia at the whiff of patchouli or the feel of a hand-formed clay pot. Three stars for those folks and a polite 'move along, nothing to see here' for the rest of you.

peace

On their first and so far only live album Lisa o Piu managed to score a major coup by landing the brilliant Roger Wootton of Comus, shortly after Wootton had reformed his legendary band in 2008. Wootton and Piu played a pair of dates at Mello's flagship club in Stockholm in December, 2008 from which these six tracks were culled.

I'm not sure what the group's entire setlist was for those shows, but this sampler is a great cross-section of Comus standards and some of Piu's better material, which at the time was a pretty limited catalog given the band had only released one single at that point in their career. They would issue a debut studio album (without Wootton) and a follow-up over the next couple of years, both considerably more mellow than these tracks and much more subdued than anything Comus ever recorded.

The first and most noticeable characteristic of this record is the excellent recording quality, especially given it was cut live and in a small club setting. The group had clearly spent a fair amount of time rehearsing and working out the arrangements, as the Comus material had to be adapted to a slightly different instrument set, although the requisite acoustic guitar, violin and flute are staples of Piu's band as much as they were in the original Comus lineup.

Wootton's influence is rather obvious if one listens to the later Piu studio material. The band's original tunes, especially the throwback 'Cinnamon Sea', are a bit edgier than the versions they would record on their own. At the same time the Comus tracks aren't anywhere near as raw and biting as they were on the early recordings that made Comus a legend in psychedelic folk circles. In all the softening of Wootton's output and concurrent scuffing up of Piu's material makes for a pretty much homogeneous offering.

The highlights are the reverent though somewhat measured rendition of the classic 'Song to Comus', the Piu original 'Cinnamon Sea', and a pleasantly awkward offering of 'Out of the Coma' which most of the original Comus lineup would release as the opening track on their comeback album of the same name in early 2012.

One surprising inclusion is 'Down (Like a Movie Star)' from the 1974 Comus release 'To Keep From Crying'. I've always liked that song, but at the same time have to admit when I first heard of this recording I sought it out hoping to hear a gloriously raunchy version of 'Diana' or even 'Drip Drip' from the classic 'First Utterance'. Sadly I was disappointed on that point.

No matter, this is a delightful collaboration featuring the godfather of Wyrd folk and a young representation of the New Guard, both with similar aspirations though at decidedly different points in their respective musical careers. Wootton would go on to hold his reformed Comus together long enough to produce a new studio album, and Lisa o Piu cranked out a couple records of their own. Both of them seem to be at crossroads today, and it will be interesting to see what comes next from the two musical experiments. In the meantime this is a solid bit of music that should appeal to most any fan of psychedelic folk. This is easily a three star offering and well recommended to most prog music fans.

peace