Browse by Artist: IVYTREE, THE

Artist:	IVYTREE, THE
Title:	Winged Leaves
Label:	CATSUP PLATE
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	CPR 720CD

"Glenn Donaldson plays in a whole slew of phenomenal bands -- the Skygreen Leopards, the Blithe Sons, Thuja, the Franciscan Hobbies and about a half-dozen others -- releasing them on Jewelled Antler, the label he co-founded, and numerous others. His vast and engaging creative output covers everything from field recordings and found sounds to plaintive pop to wide-eyed, drooling psychedelia and remains engaging and compelling. Winged Leaves, the Ivytree follow-up to the 2003's Orchards & Caravans (credited to The Birdtree -- stay with me here), again finds Donaldson brewing a potent and unique style of acid folk balanced with incidental and instrumental pieces that focus on field recordings and less traditionally structured pieces. The songs here are based on guitar and voice improvisations and fleshed out with layers of bowed bouzouki, banjo, and dulcimer, along with organ and percussion. There is a distant melancholy in these songs, a mournfulness that somehow manages to be stately and tuneful in the rumble of sounds passing by. Donaldson's voice accounts for much of this: his echoing, wordless (or, at the very least, indecipherable) falsetto cuts through the layers, like the summer sun poking through a dark canopy of leaves above. Edition of 1000 copies in hand assembled, letterpressed chipboard digipaks, with full color tipped-on cover image and poster with Donaldson's dizzying collage work."

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