A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day trying to sort out the CDs at home; attempting to make some space on the shelves, really, for the piles of stuff that had accumulated over the last year or so. As I was weeding out a lot of mediocre post-rock from the late ‘90s, I kept coming across good things I hadn’t played in years, like Judy Henske & Jerry Yester’s “Farewell Aldebaran”. Playing it, it struck me of how much it shared with a new record I’ve been playing a fair bit over the past month, “Light Of A Vaster Dark” by Faun Fables. I’m conscious of not having paid enough attention to Dawn McCarthy’s band over the years; stemming, perhaps, from receiving my first FF record in the same envelope as Joanna Newsom’s “Milk-Eyed Mender”. Both records had something nebulously medieval about them, though McCarthy’s voice couldn’t be much more different from that of Newsom, especially at that point in her career. Not unlike Henske, McCarthy’s voice is bold and stentorian, capable of fearsome power. She’s been one of Will Oldham’s duetting partners, with a similar complimentary heft to the likes of Ashley Webber and Lavinia Blackwall. Truth is, though, I’ve liked all the subsequent Faun Fables albums, without spending a great deal of time with them.I don’t really feel qualified, as a result, to make pronouncements about whether “Light Of A Vaster Dark” is notably better than them. But for whatever reason, it’s the one I’ve played most by far. Thanks to McCarthy’s solemn, incantatory style, and the Arthurian drapes which somehow accumulate around them, it’s easy to talk about Faun Fables in terms of a perceived ‘witchiness’, though listening a bit more closely to “Light Of A Vaster Dark” that seems unfairly reductive. Judging by the footnotes and allusions which accompany the lyrics, it’s a scholarly endeavour; rich with poetry and western lore – Willa Cather gets a couple of references, for a start. Consequently, “On The Open Plains” and “Parade” seem invigorated with a kind of frontier spirit, which oddly fits in with the more baroque, Anglo-folkish vibes that generally predominate. McCarthy’s mighty voice often sits among clean, layered vocal arrangements, and above chamber-like string arrangements. Plenty of artists are currently working in this area; I listened to a pretty disappointing example, from Fern Knight, just yesterday afternoon. Perhaps the closest contemporary might be Nina Nastasia (circa “The Blackened Air”, maybe), though Faun Fables’ music feels less introverted, more theatrical. Which is where, I guess, the Judy Henske comparison makes most sense, on songs like “O Mary” especially. It’s a strong and consistent album, very atmospheric and crafted as a whole. I do, though, keep coming back to two songs placed near the start, “Light Of A Vaster Dark” itself and “Housekeeper”, which calls to mind a mix of Steeleye Span (McCarthy forthrightly leading the massed voices , like Maddy Prior) and the more arcane Comus. Anyhow, I’ve got the other Faun Fables albums at home: if anyone knows them all better than I do, maybe they could chime in and explain how this one compares?

The way Joanna Newsom tells it, Ryan Francesconi had a critical role to play in “Have One On Me”: not just as chief arranger and player of the Bulgarian tambura, kaval, mandolin, banjo, recorder and so on, but also (along with drummer Neal Morgan) in steering her towards making “Have One On Me” a triple CD set. It’s a bit of a surprise, then, to find Francesconi’s own album doesn’t reflect such extravagance. Instead, “Parables” packs eight pieces into just over half an hour, and consists entirely of Francesconi working away on nothing more exotic than an acoustic guitar. The results, though, sound less like a paring back of Francesconi’s ambition, and more like an intense concentration of it. When the title track begins “Parables”, there are flurries of guitar that suggest – like Newsom – this Portland, Oregon musician has closely studied Malian kora music. In the accompanying notes, Newsom confirms as much and calls “Parables” “an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African/Balkan/Baroque/bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.” I can’t pretend to know much – well, anything – about the “Bulgarian folk technique” that Newsom also mentions. One of the striking things about “Parables”, though, is how – that bluegrass allusion notwithstanding – it feels distinctly apart from American folk music. While many of Francesconi’s guitar soloist contemporaries begin their trajectories in the New American Primitive tradition, then often head off into transcendental raga territory, he seems to be following a different path. The one of those contemporaries that he faintly resembles might be James Blackshaw, in particular his duets with the baroque lute player Jozef Van Wissem in Brethren Of The Free Spirit. I think it’s a certain classical bent, a courtly serenity, a barely discernible medievalism that also, on the likes of “Pravo”, also reminds me of some John Renbourn solo albums. I suspect I’ve talked about this before when discussing James Blackshaw, but for a non-musician like myself, it can be tricky identifying the strengths of a record like “Parables” without tending towards a rather woolly, nebulous way of writing about music. Suffice to say, perhaps, that it’s quite lovely; that it has an appealingly contemplative air throughout, as if Francesconi can project an air of calm through his music even in the midst of fiendish technical complexity; and that the album it reminds me of most is Toumani Diabaté’s “Mande Variations”, which ranks as pretty high praise.

Looks like we’re heading deep into 2011 releases now, and this latest by Arbouretum, slated for January, is a really good one. If you’ve not latched on to this distinctly underrated Baltimore band, there’s a bit of catching-up available here: a piece on their last album, “Song Of The Pearl”; a live review from 2009’s blinding Club Uncut show; and something about Dave Heumann’s recent side-project, Coil Sea. Since that 2009 tour finished, Heumann has fiddled with Arbouretum’s lineup, and it initially looks like bad news that Steve Strohmeier – crudely, Richard Lloyd to Heumann’s Verlaine – has departed the ranks, to be replaced by a keyboards player. As it turns out, though, “The Gathering” is if anything heavier than previous Arbouretum records. The familiar influences I’ve logged before are all present and correct; Heumann’s debt to the serpentine intricacies of Richard Thompson’s songwriting is more pronounced than ever. This time, though, it comes with an extra heft that someone here described as stoner folk-rock. Consequently, when the opening “White Bird” thunders in, it sounds very much as if the martial rhythm section of Corey Allender and JV Brian Carey have been channelling something like Om. The tonal range of the whole album feels pleasingly narrow and focused; it drives on in this linear, psychedelic fashion, remorselessly. Soon enough, Heumann is cutting loose with one of his sensational solos, but he always keeps within the tight parameters of the song: this is a jam as a precision trip, not a freeform self-indulgence (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with those, of course). “The Gathering” goes on like this, with a pummelling sense of purpose, even when Arbouretum slow down on “When Delivery Comes” or Jimmy Webb’s fantasy on the theme of mythic archetypes, “The Highwayman”. The press notes say the album’s inspired by Jung, by the way, which may be significant here. By the end, they clock up the ten-minute “Song Of The Nile”, which sounds like perhaps the best thing Arbouretum have ever recorded; a low-slung and blasted psych throbber that, when it gets rolling, features Heumann playing – and I suspect he won’t be over-enamoured with the comparison, but it’s meant well – in a way which reminds me of Josh Homme, circa Kyuss, perhaps. The insistent drone pulse reminds me, too, of bands I hadn’t previously seen as such obvious fellow travellers: Wooden Shjips and Endless Boogie, especially the latter’s similarly climactic “A Life Worth Leaving”. I read recently of a New York show where Arbouretum, with Hans Chew guesting on keys, jammed on “Sister Ray” for an hour, before being replaced by Endless Boogie, who kept it rolling for another hour, more or less. Anyone see this, by any chance?