Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice - Gipsy Freedom

While past releases saw the band's avant folk dosed somewhat conservatively with the blues, free jazz, heavy psych, and metal, Gipsy Freedom brings these other, non-folk elements to the fore and generally turns the volume up. It's the band's most confounding and rewarding release. You may hear the faint echoes of Island Harvest-era Albert Ayler on one track, Iommi-derived riffage on the next, torch songs that sound torn straight from the Gershwin songbook on the next, and Can-style epic grooves on the next. Radically different, yet sustaining the group's high level of musical and thematic consistency, Gipsy Freedom is the sound of a band breaking out of the box and using the discarded shapes to construct strange new universes. Five Rue Christine. 2006.