Vetiver hopes to gain exposure through Tight Knit
Tight Knit's subtleties make it worth many listens.
Published Feb. 17, 2009
Since the mid-1980s, Sub Pop, the Seattle-based record label best known for signing Nirvana, has been signing bands and releasing albums with a very high success rate. Many new bands that haven't reached the proper spotlight sign with Sub Pop and gain lots of new attention. Vetiver, an American folk collective, released its first album with Sub Pop, and as expected, it's getting a lot of attention Vetiver didn't see in the past.
Tight Knit, the band's fourth full-length album (third if you don't count its cover album released last year), is a fantastic effort. Andy Cabic, singer-songwriter and mastermind behind the project, has created a record worthy of many listens, as its complexities and subtleties are hard to digest in just one listen.
Although Cabic is known for his constant collaborations with freak-folk icon Devendra Banhart, this brainchild has more of an accessible feel to it and can be enjoyed by both indie-folk fans and noise fans alike.
The first track on the album, "Rolling Sea," starts out with simple, acoustic picking and Cabic's well developed falsetto. The song then turns into a pretty standard folk song, both instrumentally and lyrically. It ends on an instrumental soundscape seen in some post-rock acts but starts immediately up again with the folk sound in the later tracks.
"Everyday," a favorite from the album, really shows some of Cabic's songwriting greatness and takes a different direction than what is seen on the rest of the record. The strummed guitar chords are joined by Cabic's lyrics: "Everyday I'm away from you shakes me up inside/I wanna be near you, know that you are here/lyin' just next to me. How happy we'd both be." Between the swirly guitar sounds and tambourine, it is a beautifully crafted, praise-worthy song.
The energy is lost with "On the Other Side," as it's a very traditional country and blues song. In fact, Cabic sounds almost identical to Bob Dylan in the track. By combining some of his own personal style and drawing on different influences, this track is just as cohesive as the better songs.
Tight Knit finally picks back up toward the end of the record with "More of This," a high-energy pop tune that sounds like "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend.
Despite all of the different influences Andy Cabic brought together in order to form Tight Knit, it feels like he is a veteran songwriter that will definitely be going places in the next few years. By signing with Sub Pop, some bands fall into stardom and don't ever put out another good record. But Vetiver's fourth album, first on Sub Pop, is its best record to date. As long as he keeps putting out material like Tight Knit and keeps collaborating with icons like Devendra Banhart, Andy Cabic will find a lot of success with Vetiver.
