To Find Me Gone

Chronique

With his second album, Vetiver mainstay Andy Cabic continues to make low-key folk-rock with a mildly psychedelic tinge that will appeal to fans of his friend Devendra Banhart. While Cabic's songs are at their heart placid reflective works, they're given some dreamy, at times trance-like ambience with the layering of sighing backup vocals, subliminal background droning elements, and campfire-in-the-woods percussion. At times he sounds like Marc Bolan in his early days (especially on the closing track, "Down at El Rio"), though without an edge that's as eccentric or grating. The country-rockish shuffle of "Won't Be Me" is about as high-energy as the album gets. Occasionally it moves into tunes with the yearning, reflective quality of numerous celebrated folk-rock singer/songwriters of the late '60s and early '70s, though the material generally has a somewhat spacier, more ambient quality than what you would have heard on such vintage releases. It makes for pleasant if undemanding listening, and if it's anachronistic, it's not self-consciously so.
© Richie Unterberger /TiVo