Pitchfork

Recently, the rural Vermont mavericks Matthew Valentine (MV) and Erika Elder (EE) have been receiving a good amount of belated attention for their roles as free-folk pioneers. Typically enough, however, this recognition has come at a time when the wayfaring duo have already begun moving their sound out onto virgin pastures. Together with their current group the Bummer Road, in their latest work the two have largely abandoned overt folk gestures in favor of heavier, more electric space-blues. This subtle directional shift was much in evidence on the group's massive 2006 double album Mother of Thousands, and is even more pronounced on their Ecstatic Peace debut Green Blues. Here, for the first time, MV and EE make music that might almost be briefly confused with conventional rock, before it eventually mutates and spirals away as ever into the duo's own uniquely stylized private solar system.

By all appearances, Green Blues was produced in the same homespun manner-- which Valentine has cheekily dubbed "MV Spectravision"-- as the duo's umpteen previous albums, many of them self-released on their Child of Microtones imprint. Yet there is no question that this sounds like the Bummer Road's biggest budget recording to date. MV and EE's shared vocals are given an increased authority in the mix, while the rest of the group's heavily FX-treated instruments are carefully balanced with a newfound clarity. The group sound here is rounded out by such Bummer Road mainstays as Mo' Jiggs on harmonica, Tim Barnes on drums, Samara Lubelski on bass and violin, and a pair of these outspread tracks even feature the contributions of J. Mascis on mellotron.

In his earlier work with Tower Recordings and in previous incarnations of MV and EE's ongoing project The Medicine Show, Valentine was among the first guitarists of his generation to widely incorporate elements from the then out-of-print Takoma and ESP back catalogs, along with other esoteric loner-folk details from his record collection. These finger-picked, backwoods acoustic ragas are but a hazy memory on Green Blues' opening "East Mountain Joint", a shambling rock ode written in praise of high country living. "I spark one off...the sound is cranked, Pretty Things on the radio/ And I'm free, F-R-double-E," the duo sing in unison, effortlessly recalling the glazed roots dislocation of early Royal Trux. Aided in part by the primitive guitar of Willie "Gutbucket" Lane, the hard-stomping "Canned Happiness" digs even deeper, migrating its John Lee Hooker rhythms into a vortex of time-shifting delay and communal New England mysticism.

As with the recent work of such contemporaries as Califone or Jackie-O Motherfucker, MV and EE have proven able to effectively subvert the shopworn conventions of roots-based music, primarily due to the way they've been able to wholly internalize and intuitively reconfigure their source material. On "Mine All Troubled Blues" Elder sings a lyric that might have appeared on a Bessie Smith side nearly a century ago ("My man treats me so mean/ I don't know right from wrong") but wisely avoids attempting a standard over-emotive vocal treatment. Instead, she delivers the song with an unsettling, glassy-eyed detachment, sounding as though she's quietly on the verge of burning the place to the ground with everybody inside.

On this track, as on the epic jams "Grassthighs" and the 18-minute closer "Solar Hill", MV and EE are aided tremendously by the unorthodox playing of their supporting cast, particularly Mo' Jiggs. In constant dialogue with Valentine's acid guitar leads, Jiggs' alien harmonica figures hover in suspension like giant sea turtles placidly moving through sunlit waters. Meanwhile, characters with stage names like Sparrow Wildchild and Nemo Bidstrup contribute an assortment of flutes, tambura, and ukelin to the music's gauzy structure. As it slowly grows to full flutter, "Solar Hill" draws upon the radiant echoes of some of the Grateful Dead's extended pastoral voyages. And though it offers reminders of MV and EE's still potent free-folk imagination, it also leaves one with the impression that their pioneering trail is still likely too personalized, twined and twisted to lure many future settlers.