Milkweed

After a series of EPs that cut, curdle, and re-contextualize folklore into haunting psych-folk hallucinations, Milkweed brings their approach to a full length. Out of pamphlets and into epics, the band uses The Táin translated by Thomas Kinsella from the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge as their source for lyrics this time. The band offers up a winding and winking rendition of the story on their Bandcamp, but even without knowing the larger story, the record picks up the yoke where it lay from their last works. Medieval woes and wonders are chopped, copied, corroded, and fed into the digital woodchipper. The Táin is cut up like a Burroughs writing session and sweat through with the grace of Bridget St. John reinterpreted by The Caretaker.

The record feels both traditional and ahead of its time. It’s an archeological dig into the future, aural runes that point towards pain and glory delivered between the spools of a twice dubbed Maxell 60. The log remains, but left without the cipher to full feel the scope, instead we’re left grappling through the band’s dusted beats, blind reading the brail that’s been sanded by time and turbulence. The eroded messages offer shape, but dance through the firelight just out of view. The band is bard and shaman in one, turning the past into acrid smoke, transforming folklore through their own alchemy into something hypnotic. The pieces leave the listener seasick yet entranced, struck with the feeling of touching the infinite, but that the encounter comes with a curse. It’s good to see that the band’s form fits a larger scale, so here’s to see what other tomes get the treatment in the future.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.