School of the Flower

Gifted guitarist, heavy head. Ben Chasny dials up his first Drag City release with beautiful, boundless songs of plucking mastery.

Wedding the experimental free-folk of "New Weird America" to the more conventionally song-focused SF freak-folk movement, Six Organs of Admittance mastermind Ben Chasny comes into his own on this, his first-ever studio-recorded LP. Richly textured and three-dimensional, School of the Flower straddles the line between moody ambient madness and vintage sunlit psych-folk.

School of the Flower stands somewhere between Compathia and For Octavio Paz, a mysterious, beautifully executed series of airy yet mysterious vocal and instrumental songs that put Chasny's elliptical guitar playing front and center (as has become the norm, he also plays organ and sings) and are draped in Chris Corsano's darkly textured percussion and organ work.