Espers

Serenity now! Philly's psych-folk stalwarts are suddenly dreaming in color.

by John Vettese

Mark Stehle (L-R) Brooke Sietinsons and Meg Baird of Espers

It's clear from the first swift splash of cymbal and brisk strum of acoustic guitar: This new Espers record won't be the same old tour of the drone factory. The song is "I Can't See Clear," an upbeat waltz where the madrigal harmonies of Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons bob and weave in a playful cadence. On the wordless chorus, Greg Weeks' electric guitar briefly swells into a sinister minor key lick, but quickly releases the tension and returns to the serenity of the verse.

"That was definitely a purposeful decision," says Weeks of the brighter aesthetic on III, out this week on Drag City Records. "Not to say, all right, here's our four-minute droney, crazy kooky part of the song. Which you love, sure, but we didn't want to stereotype ourselves."

Espers' self-titled 2004 debut took cues from the '60s English folk of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, slowed it down like a 45 played at 33 1/3, and laid it atop airy ambiences. Two years later, the ethereal turned eerie on II, where the sound became thicker and more dissonant; the searing, intense "Dead King" uses an unusual blend of instrumentation (Omnichord, Doric transistored organ, singing bowls) to grip mercilessly onto a mechanical whir that, over many minutes, grows from bewitching to petrifying.

Nothing on the new album is that frightening. In fact, subtle touches like the wistful Theremin solo on "Caroline" and the softly plucked major-chord verse of "The Pearl" are some of the most traditionally beautiful things Espers has done. But amid these moments of Fairport at the proper RPM, there still sit unsettling sounds; a discordant change later on in "The Pearl," the unsettling build of the march-of-humankind study "New Colony." The band hasn't softened its sound, per se — it has opened it up.

Weeks is quick to point out that the same 24-track reel-to-reel console that recorded the teeming II was also used, and filled up, on the seemingly more spare III. He says those tracks were more carefully controlled, effected and blended so that even though the sonic plate is just as full, to the listener it sounds like there's more open space.

"That's something we had all really talked about, because II was so dense, so dark," Weeks says.

"Primordial" is how Baird describes it. She says a visual way of thinking about the new record was spawned in the initial songwriting meetings and arrangement sessions with drummer Otto Hauser and cellist Helena Espvall. "That album was in black and white, this one would be in color, kind of like passing through a prism," she says.

They embark next month on a winter tour in Europe and on both U.S. coasts, with new players Norm Fetter of Enumclaw on bass and John Heron of Make a Rising on drums. They aren't yet thinking about subsequent recordings. Likely, the next major change we'll see from Espers is a move beyond numerically titled releases.

"In theory, our fourth album should have no name at all," Weeks says.

Baird smiles, finishing his thought. "Just personal symbols."

"If we kept going with numbers, then we'd be out of Zeppelin territory and into Chicago," Weeks says. "And that could be a dangerous area."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)