#experimental folk

[unknowable-known]

[mon-nid]

[mgabrielb]

Spotify

[possible-streetwear]

[dustedmagazine]

Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection — s-t 3 (Full Time Hobby)

Photo by Rebecca Moon

Spencer Cullum and friends return for their third and final album under the Coin Collection moniker. It continues the same easy-flowing vibe of the previous two albums, but is more succinct and song-focused, with no exploratory instrumentals like “Dieterich Buxtehude” from volume one or “The Three Magnets” from volume two. Running to nine tracks across a tight 32 minutes, volume three caps off the series on a high note with its refined, layered sound, featuring contributions from a range of musicians including Allison de Groot, Erin Rae, Annie Williams, Oisin Leech, and Rich Ruth.

Volume one was reviewed by Jennifer Kelly back in 2020, aptly summarised as “lovely, intricate and full of ease.” I covered volume two in 2023, highlighting how the music sounds “perpetually poised to launch into more explorative realms.” Volume three contains the contemporary unease that supposedly sparked its genesis within songs that sound familiar and superficially welcoming. At just under two minutes, “Washed Upon the Shore” comprises just Cullum’s conversational vocal and after-hours piano, lightly colored by some Fripp-style sustained electric-guitar tone. At the other end of the spectrum there’s the rich, languid “Jackie Paints,” a celebration of Cullum’s mother, which features lovely flute and pedal steel decoration. The shuffling jazz-folk of opener “Rowan Tree” conceals lyrics about death within its jaunty tune (“Rowan tree, rowan tree, stop my heart and bring me peace”). And the ominously titled “Don’t Go Downtown” is a dead ringer for Terry Bush’s “Maybe Tomorrow,” best known as the bittersweet theme song to TV’s The Littlest Hobo.

Wherever they roam, the songs remind the listener that folk music can be both reassuring and unsettling in its recapitulation of traditional tales that speak of nature’s eternal cycle of death and rebirth. As Cullum gently intones in the reflective “Look at the Moon,” “The day doesn’t end, it just keeps spinning around.”

Tim Clarke

[alephskoteinos]

[mxliv-oftheendless]

True to form for me, when a class discussion board asks us to pick a song that represents how we feel about our jobs, while everyone goes with Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, SZA, and whatnot, my ass goes with “Norupo” by Heilung XD

We’ve got pop songs, rock songs, rap songs, and then my experimental folk song that’s sung in Old Norse lmao

[hellwatermelon]