Futurebirds "Baba Yaga"

 

I can't recall where I first saw their name, but a sample run across a few tracks proved intriguing enough for the purchase.  The first spin elicited a muted response, neither yea nor neigh, but there was an obvious My Morning Jacket thing working within the mix.  Now that I've completed the required (and then some) spins, I'd venture to say that this is what MMJ would have sounded like if they had hailed from Athens, GA instead of Louisville, KY.  I'm labeling it alt-country-stoner-folk, and yes, it improves with party favours...



A bit of Church chiming going on here, too, or R.E.M. if you want to get regional about it.  Other bands that popped into mind were Wilco, Fleet Foxes, David Lowery aka Cracker aka Camper Van Beethoven. 

I told as many people as possible to go see them at Bonnaroo this year in the smaller tent because down the road they very well could end up headlining the main stage one night.  They had the unenviable task of starting their gig early on the opening day, but from all accounts they had an enthusiastic crowd gathered before them.  They had also performed at the 'Roo  in 2011 following their debut LP, so some festival veterans knew to get there early. 



I found a review of this album on Pitchfork which basically peed all over itself citing how good it was in the site's usual overblown, verbose manner (reviewers must all be creative writing majors and a few may know a little something about music) and still scored it at 7.5 (very proud of themselves using tenths of a point)!  Highest rating I could find on anything was 8.5 (there's that point again).  Anyway, the reviewer happened to be spot on by saying it wasn't all a gem, that three tracks were inferior to the quality of the other ten.  Simple math would score that a 7.7, so deduct .2 for what?  I'm going to take the three songs I felt were a tad flat, convert them into minutes, round it off...divide into...

I give it an 8.1