In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant garde music. Artists on both sides of the Atlantic, includingThe Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Pearls Before Swine and Comu s, combined sweet melancholy and modal melody with shape-shifting experimentation to create sounds of unsettling oddness that sometimes go underthe name acid or psych folk. A few of these artists – notably the String Band, who actually made it to Woodstock – achieved mainstr eam success, while others remained resolutely entrenched underground. But by the mid-70s even the bigger artists found sales dwindling, and thispeculiar hybrid musical genre fell profoundly out of favour. For 30 yea rs it languished in obscurity, apparently beyond the reaches of culturalreassessment, until, in the mid-2000s a new generation of artists colle ctively tagged 'New Weird America' and spearheaded by Devendra Banhart, Espers and Joanna Newsom rediscovered acid and psych folk, revered it and from it, created something new.
Thanks partly to this new movement, many original acid and psych folk artists have re-emerged, and original copies of rare albums command high prices. Meanwhile, both Britainand America are home to intensely innovative artists continuing the tra dition of delving simultaneously into contemporary and traditional styles to create something unique.
Seasons They Change tells the story of the birth, death and resurrection of acid and psych folk. It explores the careers of the original wave of artists and their contemporary equivalents, finding connections between both periods, and uncovering a previously hidden narrative of musical adventure.
