(ecstatic peace) Two things to be said about this particular jangle of songs: This record symbolizes Matt Valentine’s rather commercial-sounding attempt to generate his former psych catalogue to the general public. The second, being that the over-rated term “freak-folk” doesn’t actually exist! It’s a marginal description for critics/retailers to use in order to keep genres in official categorization without referring to art itself (i.e. what most people describe as “interesting”). And considering most of “freak-folk” has derived from an urban setting (Devandra lives in LA, everybody), why not just say, well, “pop”? Not that this one’s riddled with typical choruses—it’s more like the fleeting essence of Neil Young’s On The Beach meets The Flaming Lips without a Hollywood mastering system. Taking under consideration their underground tenure throughout the past, these well-organized tracks seem surprised of even themselves as layers of one-room, wood-frolicking improvisation harvest their way through each overdub, capturing the spontaneity of their live performances with a new breed of down-home transparency. Dionysus beware: the walloping harmonica is in fact played by a human.