Pitchfork

The field recordings that map The Birdtree's recent pilgrimage into Audubon territory chart a deep-woods atmosphere illuminated solely by the fleeting pulses and fades of filtered sunlight that drift across a sandy forest floor. Originally released as a Jewelled Antler Collective CD-R and now reissued as a CD proper by Last Visible Dog, Orchards & Caravans corrals fourteen of Glenn Donaldson's ethereal acid-folk compositions; it's the San Francisco shaman's strongest concoction to date, ranking with classic releases by such disparate but aesthetically connected groups as Ghost, Flying Saucer Attack, and International Harvester.

Much like his more droning work with Loren Chasse as The Blithe Sons, Orchards & Caravans takes flight around delicate guitar melodies and pensive vocalizations, incorporating bowed oud, bells, toy accordion, Wurlitzer, harmonium, bouzouki, banjo, keyboards, and occasional drumming. Packaged in a highly saturated collage of birds and butterflies, a gaping Venus flytrap, distant trees, prehistoric flora, and the half-human birds found often in Egyptian mythology, the album combines experimental instrumentals, magisterial folk, and lengthy drones.

Evoking the delicate dance of pine needles when they catch a breeze and disappear over a horizon line, "White Sundials Faced the Sun" is a segment of subdued Loren Mazzacane-esque guitar noodle: Maintaining a slow-drip tempo, the carefully spaced guitar strums are held together with fragile vocal sighs. Assuming the properties of its title, "Pillar of Clouds" is a shimmering Middle-Eastern drone punctured with bells and the plucks and strums of various stringed instruments. The darkest excursion on the record, "The Marsh" mucks Goosewind-styled noise with scuttling contusions that build to a distant drone; overlaid with birds, wind and hisses, the manmade sounds ultimately consume the silvan calls of its backdrop.

Surprisingly poppy at times, Donaldson goes beyond these incidental bits, managing also to pen some solid folk hooks. In his hands (and without Bob Dylan's backup singers), the traditional "Mary Ann" emerges wrapped in hoarfrost, a stark ballad whittled to the high-gloss atmospherics of Galaxie 500. Hopelessly catchy, and perhaps Donaldson's most straightforwardly appealing song to date, "Everyone of Us a New Leaf" features rattling drums by Steven R. Smith, a minimal organ line, talk of ghosts, and a distant vocal intonation most reminiscent of Black Heart Procession.

Like Ben Chasny during his most patient work as Six Organs of Admittance, Donaldson is also adept at incorporating loose structures that allow for the creation of songs within songs and asymmetrical pieces that sprout into unexpected directions. Unlike its dreary name, "Black Rainbows, Part 1 & 2" is the acid folk cousin of The Temptations' "My Girl"; halfway through, the sweetness uncoils into a fractured organ rumble, a distant thunder or grayscale prism. Moving in an opposite direction, "The Lost Sun" emerges amid a noisy flight pattern but gives way to poignant strains of melodic guitar, half-shaken jingle bells, a lost war, and a lost sun. Here, the jangling instrumentation contrasts with the track's ingrained melancholy.

I've looked for holes in the armor but Donaldson's too fastidious. Prior to this, he came closest to reaching these heights on The Blithe Sons' We Walk the Young Earth. Here, though, he manages to top that effort, distilling the best attributes of his naturalist psych and patiently building a fully realized dreaming hill, something that fellow Terrastock travelers, in even their most transcendent work, have only been able to hint at.