Wooden Wand - Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg

So is New Weird America a genre now? Weirdos from all over the globe have been strumming this kind of psychedelic folk around campfires for millennia. Musicians are weird, that's what makes them what they are. This solo album from James Toth, the Wooden Wand of Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, previously released on a limited cassette run, is a melancholic trip, although the peyote blues never explode with any intensity that threatens brain cells. Ostensibly indistinguishable from countless other singer-guitarist albums, the flanged and apocalyptically hallucinatory vocals turn it into a mystic voyage, albeit a relatively low-key one. Toth's pseudo-shamanism voice is fragile yet authoritative, and extracted from the improv freak-outs of his co-conspirators, 'Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg' benefits from a repeat listenability that should recommend the curious to this "new" "genre". [Ali Maloney]