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Plants, "Photosynthesis"
This Portland, Oregon group alternates between folk songs and quasi-mystical drones on its fourth album and performs both styles fairly well. Yet they're at their best when they combine the two, which is something they don't do nearly enough here. Still, this album has several transcendent moments of note.
Calling the album Photosynthesis is pretty obvious for a band named Plants, and unfortunately most of the song titles similarly lack poetry. Convenient rather than descriptive titles like "Seedling," "Roots," and "Tumbleweed" stretch the concept a little too thin. Usually this wouldn't bother me, but I also had difficulty determining exactly what the group is trying to express, and these titles didn't help. I suspect a certain reverence for the plant kingdom and its structural parts because of the gravity of the atmospheric instrumentals on the album, yet I don't really get a sense of why the group honors these things. Titles less generic would have gone a long way toward providing a context for these ideas. Even so, I did like quite a bit of the material here.
The lush and gorgeous opening title track is a great introduction, and equally compelling is the hazy "Roots." "Seedling," one of the few tracks with vocals, has a pleasant vibe and melody. On the other hand, "Seedling Two" isn't particularly memorable, nor is "Tumbleweed," apart from some unusual banjo playing. My favorite track is easily "Seedling Three" because it best incorporates the group's folk and drone tendencies, making it the album's most fully realized song. An album of others like these would have been stunning, but instead the group comes just shy of making something truly remarkable.
