Just try feeling downhearted while listening to Strangefolk. Once their infectious rhythms, sweet harmonies, and catchy lyrics start to play, downright gleeful is the only way to be.
It's been some time since the band has been in the studio, but an aptly-titled new album on the Mammoth Records label, "Great Long While," is reportedly finished, and it's just being delayed in distribution.
While fans may anxiously await the latest release, Strangefolk's most recent album, "Weightless in Water," produced in 1998, remains a groovy example of the band's upbeat, feel-good musical vision of the world.
Formed in Vermont in 1992, Strangefolk earned a dedicated following with extensive touring in clubs and colleges all over the Northeast, eventually branching out across the country to the West coast.
Their songwriting is clearly the product of a long tradition of folk music, but Strangefolk also infuses into their songs some serious, danceable grooves that even on a studio album often seem completely improvised.
The combination is a unique musical experience, always fresh no matter how often one has heard their songs.
"Weightless in Water" keeps the listener in suspense, so to speak. Just when the melody becomes familiar, it changes and jumps to a whole new line, as in the track "Oxbow."
Instead of jarring discord, the effect is a new current in the music's overall flow throughout the album.
Although somewhat repetitive, the distinct pieces of music simultaneously stand out individually and blend into harmonies unified by Reid Genauer's lead vocals.
Part of Strangefolk's successful mixture of folk music and rock grooves is its use of traditional folk instruments alongside more mainstream rock guitars and drums.
Once regarded as staples of cheesy jukebox country music, a mandolin and a banjo on the track "Otis" jam just as hard as the guitars.
The band reinterprets folk music through their energetic experimentation with folk, rock, and even bluegrass styles.
Beneath the album's joyous rhythms lies thoughtful songwriting. Genauer sings about relationships and the journeys people take through life.
For those who miss the liner notes, he clarifies on the track "Roads": "This is a song about lifestyles/Decisions that we make/Roads that we abandon/And others that we take." The chorus to that same track is "I don't know where I'm going but I'll get there./Sometimes I'm wondering where will it be?"
Wherever it is that Genauer is going--down tree-lined roads, up to the house atop a hill, to the river bank, through all the warm seasons to the cold--the listener can't help but follow.
The songs tell little stories about people who probably still live in Vermont -- Otis the small-town working man, a farmer "with calloused hand and feet", and the family that lives up the hill in "Valhalla" where "Someone is in the bath tubDrinking local beer/and blowing smoke up to the rafters."
Genauer acts as the narrator of the album's little stories, on the track "Furnace" singing, "I'm collecting stories/'cause they're better than my own."
Woven throughout the album is an elusive first person, who makes a complex appearance on the track "Whatever"--"I doubt myself sometimes never always"--and seems frustrated on the track "Who I Am"--"If you don't know me by now/You're never going to."
Strangefolk, which last played at Dartmouth in September, will play three consecutive nights at the Higher Ground in Winooski, Vermont, later this week.
While waiting to experience Strangefolk live, pop "Weightless in Water" into the stereo and happily justify procrastination with their line "It's all right, You can leave it 'til tomorrow."
For ticket information on Strangefolk's performance in Winooski this weekend, visit http://www.strangefolk.com or call (802)654-7079.
