Herb Lore

Sharing space with RSTB faves Bard’s Flying Vessel on new(ish) label Urthwork, Herb Lore offers up a psychedelic surprise of a debut. Dressed up in the guise of pastoral psychedelics, the cover art screams ‘70s prog with a dip into the depths of Scandinavian folk. While this isn’t the reincarnation of Kebnekajse or Ragnarök, the band delivers an interesting exploration of prog that touches both the cosmic and the pastoral poles of the spectrum. The band’s got a patient unfurling to their songs, with quite a few tunneling through territories of celestial drone. The record opens with its most anchored moment on “Ascendant of the Worm,” a gnarled outlier that throws Crazy Horse into the clouds, beginning the album’s free float towards less Terrestrial pursuits.

Bass bubbles up through “Excited Water Music,” a standout of psychedelic tension, before drone takes the tiller and those promised folk trappings come into play in the mid-section. Creosote crumbles from the cavernous crush of “Voyage to Yesod” scarring the calm that played out over the previous two pieces. They return to moments of piece on the lone moment of brevity, “Brook Byond Briah,” and the closer, a 45-minute, monolithic monster that sums up their psychedelic seep all in one place. The band’s breadth is admirable, and individually each piece shines like its own excavated jewel. As an album, it feels more like an assemblage than a journey, and with their grasp on the psychedelic spectrum, there’s a sense that future volumes could easily find the kind of seamless flow that would stitch the ebb and flow into suites that capitalize on a sense of pacing. Out of the gates, though, I, is an unpolished, but promising beginning.

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