Album Reviews

Album Review: Our Brother The Native – Sacred Psalms (FatCat)

By | Published on Monday 4 May 2009

Our Brother The Native

‘Sacred Psalms’ delivers much the same as was hinted at upon on Our Brother The Native’s recent EP ‘Parting Marrows’. Once again it’s a type of rich freak folk, though this time they are less heavy on a ramshackle falling-apart-pram sounding collection of acoustic samples. This is not to say that they aren’t in almost every song, but droning guitar and vocal harmonies come more to the fore. The result of this is a sound that takes fewer cues from Animal Collective-like bands and instead is closer to Do Make Say Think, Grizzly Bear and Múm. One of the songs, Manes, even sounds like Do Make Say Think with vocals, which is no bad thing. So, what I think I’m getting at is this: it’s kind of heavier on the folk influences than previous more noise/concrete offerings, even if ‘Dusk’ and ‘Behold’ are quite dark and experimental pieces of music reminiscent of the less playful parts of ‘Feels’-era Animal Collective. It works though, maintains your attention and is highly listenable. I can’t deny that I am increasingly inclined to think of bands that sound like this as copyists and genre hijackers, but Our Brother The Native are not targets of this whine, because they’re actually good. There is so much of this kind of music coming out of the woodwork, though, and I just hope we don’t get to the point where the noise folk world will be obscured by the more pop crossover offerings of bands like MGMT. Rest assured that Our Brother The Native have delivered an album that doesn’t fall into this latter category. It is well worth a listen. PG

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