Time Shapes the Forest Lake
Perhaps Transparent, 2003
rating: 3.5/5
reviewer: matt fink


One of the more puzzling products of the 1960s counter culture, it was, nonetheless, inevitable that folkies would eventually turn against the traditionalist and provincial themes that ran through the music and culture that they studied and give birth to a distinctively new variant.  From the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders on the east coast to the Byrds and the Grateful Dead on the west, the sounds of traditional folk music began to crossbreed with electric instrumentation and a growing drug culture to create a rather paradoxical two-headed hybrid of psych-folk that soon dropped most affiliation with traditional forms in favor of a more rock-oriented sound.   Those interested in folk music in England, however, held a bit more tightly to the traditional ethic (mainly the song canon, themes, and acoustic instrumentation of the tradition), and chose to augment those elements with the influence of other cultures and to refract those influences through the prism of their contemporary experience.  And though not English, Pothole Skinny have far more in common with those English bands of yore than they do with any of the so-called American folk experimentalists of today.

Led by former Gwens member Stephen Connolly, the hypnotic three-piece (fleshed out by a small pool of contributors) makes a decided inroad into the experimental end of the psych-folk spectrum, sprinkling pagan pixie dust while largely relying on exotic acoustic instrumentation and mysterious, faux-medieval imagery to place themselves squarely in another conceptual dimension.  Founded largely upon eerily earthward elements (plaintively picked acoustic guitars, far off clucking banjo, ominously swooping cello, and otherworldly flutes), the arrangements flow and recede, changing tempo and texture while the melodies swirl and bend around each other as if twisting around the spires of a gothic cathedral.

Much like the Incredible String Band, the ominously wispy quasi-chamber-pop “Antique Gasoline” unravels over eight minutes of complex finger-picked acoustic guitar arrangement augmented by a bowed psaltry and a gopichand.   Similarly representative, “Scroll of Westport Quay” rides dewy electric guitar lines over shuffling percussion and field recordings, hypnotically swaying into unexpected passages while devolving into its constituent parts.  Such is the subtle addition and subtraction process that informs the unpredictable aesthetic of the album, reaching an odd compromise between English folk, psychedelic exploration, and progressive rock.

Even though they can tread into fairly conventional territory with the growling distorted guitars of “The Ernest Equinox,” there is always a vocal drone or ominously dissonant clattering of the convergence of cello, acoustic guitars, and drums to create a dreamlike haze that hangs over nearly every ornate corner of these nine compositions.  Add lyrics which elliptically tend toward the fantastic and you have a listening experience that takes you well beyond the commonplace and surprisingly close to the transcendent. 

1.  Kroghs’ Whisper
2.  The Sussex Railroad Song
3.  Dream of the Labia Lament
4.  Antique Gasoline
5.  Scroll of the Westport Quay
6.  The Ernest Equinox
7.  May-Gun Explosive Flower
8.  Beneath the Frozen Pond
9.  When Morpheus Calls for Slumber