Music

Over the past four years, under the guidance of Virginia native Andy Cabic, Vetiver have evolved into a nu-folk concern of exquisitely understated expression and delicate power. The singer-songwriter/guitarist tours regularly with Devendra Banhart’s backing band and the pair have founded a record label together, while the black-eyed, avant-folk messiah himself is now a Vetiver mainstay. No cigars, then, for guessing in which ballpark ‘To Find Me Gone’ lies.

The LP is, however, very much an ensemble vehicle with Cabic at the wheel, rather than a two-hander. Its songs are elegant, unfussy and restrained, informed by the folk and country traditions, but not at all obeisant. It opens with a divinely lugubrious drone and funereal drum beat, then Cabic’s sweet, mournful tone swings in, completing the gospel picture. The pace picks up with ‘You May Be Blue’, its galloping grace recalling the mighty Swell, but then it’s all change again for ‘I Know No Pardon’, whose sun-glazed Americana sounds somehow both blessed and doomed. Elsewhere, the spirits of Velvet Underground, Lambchop, Judee Sill, Gram Parsons, Alexander Tucker and Randy Newman fleetingly appear, all evidence of Cabic’s maturing songcraft and his understanding that folk music – whether olde or nu – is a fluid and vital form.