Pitchfork

Badgerlore's first full-length emits the whisper of a fragmented forest. Alternating heartrending drone and quietly affecting folk carved by taciturn hermits, Of Things Too Sorrowful to be Reminded of, and Things Too Beautiful to Possess speaks through distant symbols, inky clouds, and thin pine-needle patterns on the floor. According to the sliver of black paper attached to the scorched-leaf sleeve, Rob Fisk and Ben Chasny spent five or so years collecting the spare coal-scented sounds contained here: written in Alaska and California, they recorded each section in California on a 4-track between 1998-2003 with only a couple of overdubs, using two guitars, two amplifiers, an organ, a violin, and miscellaneous bells and sticks.

Far from anonymous backwoods strummers, Fisk is a co-founder of Deerhoof and spent six years in the band. He left after Halfbird (which preceded last year's acclaimed Reveille), moving to Alaska with his wife, former Deerhoof keyboardist Kelly Goode. There, they built a log cabin. When they cozied themselves they started the art-pop band 7 Year Rabbit Cycle and got the idea for their Free Porcupine Society record label. Ben Chasny is the wonderful, acid-folk Six Organs of Admittance: he and Fisk have been friends for years, using Badgerlore recording sessions as an excuse to get together, to notch bits of beauty into their ongoing collaboration. (For you completists, they also have a split CD called Three Owls - Six Ears with A Warm Palindrome and Feverdreams, which was released on Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers a couple of years ago).

The closest analogue I can pin to these largely improvised guitar duets is Sidereal Rest, a collection of muted firefly music released in 1995 by the Vancouver-based label Scratch. That compilation featured otherwise noisy bands like Noggin, Pork Queen, and Caroliner making bedtime music alongside seminal underground stalwarts like US Saucer, Paste, Loren Mazzacane, Thinking Fellers, and Bugskull. Badgerlore's work could be transplanted anywhere into Sidereal Rest and make sense sonically: a document to cozy-to when the late-night humming of rogue cloud formations keep you from getting shuteye. Their earthy commune music might also be compared to less-vocal Woven Hand, Doldrums, the Blithe Sons' apocalyptic-minded cousins, warped-out Alan Bishop, Skullflower's organic-farming neighbors up the road.

"Prayer", the briefest of the ten tracks, layers tapping wood, ringing bells, and a male Sara Vaughan invoking wood spirits with a twisted, slow-core hillbilly raga. "Culling The Fire Lions" uses the ancient feedback of Nurse With Wound/Current 93 to investigate veiny lines on crumbling leaves, to call forth a purifying agent to clear the slate of good and bad. In the noisy "A Girl's Mouth In Winter" a stricken voice intones: "We yell in her mouth, but nothing comes back/ Her tongue and eyes look straight past me/ And in the springtime, she asked for a glass of water/ And everyone cried." It's a redwood falling over, weighed down with too much ice, space, and memory. On "The Ruiner", spare vocals commingle as a lovely duet over a crumbling bell; listening close, I could feel my beard growing cold with hoarfrost.

On their signature anthem "Folk Music For No One", I see two guys buried beneath a blanket giving prayers to the gods of dew, raggedly dancing. "It's Cold, it's dark/ But we plant in a month" recalls Seattle's Climax Golden Twins, a man who fell in love with the moon, poetry painting the human spirit as charcoal; it also creates the album's biggest groove. For the most part, Badgerlore resist that sort of coalescing, and I'm always impressed by folks who avoid the tendency to resolve into a hook: by nature, it's more difficult to avoid catchiness than to succumb to it.

Towards the end of the album, the delicately fucked Wiccan church music of "Listen, Loved Ones" commands gently, "Loved ones, find a safe place to view this digrace/\xA0Hold each other tight through the dark night..." In the future, I'm sure they'll gather together their blackened embers, build a happier fort, and escape to a higher vantage point; here, these pipers at the gates of dusk are holed up against the the witching hour, creating beauty within a crumbling, musky night.