Pitchfork

Do they have front porches in outer space? Because Plastic Bag in the Tree, the first and quite possibly only album by the Flash Hawk Parlor Ensemble, blends down-home guitars and spacey synths as if they were recorded between episodes of "Firefly". Or, perhaps more likely, between Neighborhood Watch Association meetings: headed by Chris Funk, of Decemberists and "Colbert Report" fame, the Ensemble includes many of his Portland neighbors, who reportedly held loose, impromptu jams on the Funks' front porch. The result is an album of instrumentals (Does Funk sing? He does everything else.) that blend the organic and the synthetic in a way that's not necessarily unique, but weirdly charming all the same. The Ensemble won't ever be anyone's day job, but it's a quaint diversion.

The songs' guitars, courtesy of Funk and George T. Drag, have a dusty wagon trail stateliness that's usually at odds with the album's extraterrestrial blips and squiggles-- the "sound shapes," as the liners call them. Opener "Chained to the Pole" could easily provide the expository text crawl for a homemade re-shoot of Star Wars, and "The System of Your Choice" sounds like two R2 units gettin' it on. The pensively plucked acoustic theme on "Can't See the Moon? Cut Down the Tree" is interrupted by what sounds like the rush of an unsealed airlock, but live instrumentation doesn't always connote earthliness on Plastic Bag, nor do the sonic baubles always suggest spaceship mechanics. Victor Paul Nash's halting trumpet on "Sleep at Last!" sounds like ladies and gentlemen floating in space, while Mark Petty's forlorn horn makes Ray Davies' "I Go to Sleep" seem as curious as "Fantastic Planet". The Ensemble also cover Massive Attack's "Teardrop", but even better is Radiohead's "Amnesiac/Morning Bell" performed on banjo and dulcimer, which effectively deflates the original's posthuman pretensions.

By "Not Always Your Best Friend", which is punctuated by mechano-canine barks, the album starts to seem like a shaggy-dog campfire story-- overlong and a little repetitive. But Plastic Bag in the Tree is not the space detritus it could easily have been. Some judicious editing might have pared the album down to a more manageable length, but would have also gone against the spirit of the endeavor, whose endearing traits are its loose and loopy geniality, its pick-up session informality, its head-beyond-the-clouds whimsy.