Put That In Your Peace Pipe and Smoke it: Vetiver's Tight Knit

In a scene ridiculed for an overabundance of paisley shirts and scraggly beards, Vetiver rises above the freak folk stereotypes with its new album Tight Knit, out this week.

Vetiver has always had an array of fluctuating members and instruments revolving around the pivotal member Andy Cabic. Cabic, who writes all the songs and plays virtually every instrument, seems to be broadening the bands horizons: "I think I was able to make the most of the different moods of each song," Cabic writes on the bands website, "There are songs here that allude to elements of everything I've done so far, and songs that have something which heretofore I maybe only hinted at."

Tight Knit explores different genres with the same ease and eloquence as the previous albums Things of the Past

, To Find Me Gone and Vetiver. Though the spirit of their music remains, Cabic molds it into refreshingly different sounds ranging from poppy to ethereal. While some of the songs recall the feeling of hallucinating in Big Sur like “Down from Above,” others could easily be found in some funky Lower East Side dance hall.

No matter what the mood of the song happens to be, Tight Knit moves along in a whimsical but honest way. While many of the freak folkers are taking themselves less and less seriously (See: Devendra’s new project Megapuss), what Vetiver continues to produce is genuinely great. Clear, nostalgic, airy, even mystical…but no bullshit. Judging from this stellar release, the band is more concerned with the music than appeasing some counter culture fashion statement.