Heron Oblivion

The cumulative members of Heron Oblivion have spent their fair share of time among Raven’s pages and praises. Meg Baird’s solo work and tenure with Espers tracked a fair amount of the early ’00s around here and I feel like it should go without saying that Comets On Fire and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound are made for Raven. So bringing the members of both teams on board for a full album not only seems like a trip down nostalgia alley (maybe you have a memory lane, our psych journey is a bit seedier) but also a bit of a welcomed return to the brain-fried fields of psych-folk. The genre’s been somewhat drained of its stature of late, since that booming revival that hit in ’04-’05, but that’s not to say that the dark tinges of Pentagle, Fresh Maggots and Susan Christie don’t still make for good cannon fodder.

Now its a bit of a feint to suggest that this is as wispy as many of the connotations of the word folk or even psych-folk at its truest might drum up, the strummy plucks of Espers this ain’t, and though Baird is riding the forefront with her songwriting and taking cues from her folk past, the band lays in its own upbringing to loose the storm over a few epics that sate the hunger left for Comets On Fire’s, well, fire to be honest. Tracks like “Rama” and “Your Hollows” might start out with a raincloud drizzle of dark folk inclinations but they wind up with a tsunami’s worth of fury by the time the tracks close. And that balance is what the band’s eponymous LP is all about. The band rides the dynamics from calm to storm and keeps the listener holding on for safety. The end result is a completely heady record that feels at home with any of its member’s legacies. So far 2016 is shaping up to be a good year for psychedelic travelers and this one is definitely leading the pack.



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