Donny Hue and the Colors | Folkmote (The Kora)

This album is all about feel, and you can’t manufacture that. Feel has to be an organic thing, kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a strange little gem of an album! Where the heck do guys like Donny Hue and his fabulous Colors come from, anyway?

The ever intoxicating mystery of music is stumbling across discs like Folkmote, the debut of this Brooklyn-based ensemble, and finding out that you can still be surprised. Precious little information about this gang is revealed in the press release, other than the fact the disc was recorded in one weekend down in Richmond, Va., with players who’ve done time in Washington Social Club, Carlsonics, Nethers, and Meredith Bragg & the Terminals. But the whimsy, innocence and general airy vibe of this eclectic recording are elements you likely haven’t heard since the psychedelic era.

Folkmote doesn’t fit neatly into any specific genre, but the personality that slowly emerges evokes some fantasy jam session where Syd Barrett, Basement Tapes-era Dylan, Wayne Coyne, Rob Crow, Jim O’Rourke, Ray Davies and a few other singular songwriters are hanging around, light-hearted and peaceful on a lazy Saturday afternoon…pluckin’ their six strings, antique organs, melodicas and whatever other instruments happen to be around.

No particular rules are adhered to—some songs are short, but several are longer than seven minutes. Some kinda have a verse and chorus, but others just seem to repeat a few particular lines over and over. The oddly titled "For the Last Time, Beatrix, It’s Toast!" features only the lyric "I wouldn’t go that way if I were you" sung several times amid some haunting, leisurely guitar picking and wordless backing vocals. The point is, this album is all about feel, and you can’t manufacture that. Feel has to be an organic thing, kids.

And in that sense, this remarkable disc is one great big homegrown veggie garden of good, good vibrations. The Dylanesque "Real Long Time" has a delightfully loose "rockin’ in the basement" sound which makes the most of a rhythmic piano sound, elementary guitar chords and grinning Barrett-like vocal. It’s affably raucous, but it’s followed by the tender, introspective ballad "Paint a Picture." So you get a sense early on that there’s going to be a comfortable flow to this entire disc, and it never lets you down in that regard. "Piano Dreams" features sleighbells, old-time piano and two separate guitar parts, and builds to a late-period Beatle-ish vibe – but then the music drops away and, over a delicate bit of finger picking and some dreamy background shimmer, Hue suddenly sings with unexpected poignancy: "Spend the day awake/ Just awhile now, for goodness’ sake/ Forget what I have said/ I’ve spoken now, it’s time for bed," and the sound of his pleasing voice in the context of this unusual arrangement is stunningly beautiful.

So is the entire seven and a half minutes of the untitled track nine, which again, breaks every rule of logic in the particulars of the song’s construction. But the reverb-flavored guitar, subtle bass and eventual solid rhythm are tasty, indeed. And the title track is simply a revelation, one of the best things I’ve heard on a record this year. It employs a clear, resonant vocal that caresses your ears, melodic electric guitar, feather-brush percussion and luminous keyboards that enter the mix right when you don’t think the song could possibly get any better—and yet it proceeds to do just that. Fantastic.

Donny Hue and the Colors are almost certainly gonna be a word-of-mouth kinda band, and the subtle mysteries of this disc may evade the attention of the larger audience. But Folkmote is a thoroughly engaging listen from start to finish: kooky, tender, heartfelt, unpredictable, inspired and ultimately haunting, it’s like some old lover from the past that you had the best times with for one concentrated period, even though they eventually moved on, leaving you with only some stirring memories… A | Kevin Renick

RIYL: Syd Barrett, Donovan, Moldy Peaches