Album Review: Eternal Tapestry

[FRAGARIA VESCA] Slowly but decisively, Eternal Tapestry's been easing itself into a more pastoral conception of psychedelia. This new double album, as fragile as any German synth extravaganza from the 1970s, extends the ensemble's already endless warbling experiments, culminating in the electronically backed "Maidenhair Spleenwort." While referencing a common fern, the almost nine-minute excursion, with murmured vocals just powerful enough to rise above an incessant, electronic clapping, hovers long enough to remind of everything from Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd to Harmonia. There's just no guitar shredding.

With that brushwood and any number of other plants springing from the hothouse environment Eternal Tapestry cultivates during the Wild Strawberries sessions, sparse moments of aggro musicianship crop up. Even when it does, the heavy psych the band traded in over the course of albums like Palace of the Night Skies and The Invisible Landscape is largely absent. Distancing itself from a steadfast approach to psych (or space rock, or whatever this is) could be attributed to guitarist Dewey Mahood's departure a few years back, but the troupe's sonic proclivities were by then being sedately altered for its collaborative recording with Los Angeles' Sun Araw and the band's other 2011 release, Beyond the 4th Door. Engaging with such obtuse music, though, Eternal Tapestry furthering swiveling toward a more genteel spectrum of the genre still leaves listeners with about 70 minutes of new improvisations to wade through. If nothing else, it'll give your copy of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's (No Pussyfooting) a rest. 

SEE IT: Eternal Tapestry plays Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., with Weyes Blood and Moon by You, on Sunday, Feb. 1. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

WWeek 2015