But just as Lomax saw his folk revival driven by "young people," so the greatest diversity of the present revival is found among artists younger than, say, Sonic Youth.
José González, 29, is a Swedish son of Argentine immigrants who sings in the spectral register of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith (apparently, the Arctic Circle doesn't do much for Argentine melancholy), while his fingers draw hypnotic, hybrid figures of blues, folk-pop and flamenco. This year alone, the singer-guitarist saw the first proper American release of his 2003 album "Veneer," put out two new EPs and scored a YouTube hit with his cover of the Knife's "Heartbeats" in a Sony Bravia TV spot.
Among younger artists, the best-documented recent folk trend is "freak-folk," an unfortunate tag that evokes Tiny Tim more accurately than Joanna Newsom, Banhart and the class of other artists who bridge the folk and indie-rock scenes, sometimes with a nostalgic eye to the British folk revival of the '60s. In 2006, a variety of putative freak-folk acts have released albums that defy the supposed minimalist confines of this heading, including Espers, whose "Espers II" adds inky synth and electric leads to the band's acoustic blend of medieval and psychedelic overtones.
Newsom herself has flown the pigeonhole with 2006's least folksy folk album. The 24-year-old singer-harpist's second full-length, "Ys," has understandably divided critics. After one listen, the album (pronounced "ees") is either the acoustic second coming of Kate Bush at her ethereal best or the untimely resurrection of Yes at their gaseous worst. But with patient listening, the emotional spirals of her newly lush voice reveal a romantic confessional buried in knotty metaphor and rhapsodic arrangements courtesy of baroque-pop auteur Van Dyke Parks.
While freak-folk arguably peaked last year, 2006 has been a watershed for another trend among younger musicians: a wave of "old-time" string bands, inspired by pre-bluegrass combos of fiddle, banjo, guitar and mandolin. Whether or not these bands were sparked by the soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou," most of them were in fact formed soon after the film's 2000 release and have steadily gained acceptance on the established folk circuit ever since. This year, old-time seems to have arrived, with a critical mass of releases on respected record labels, significant airplay on outlets like WUMB and XM Radio, and a November article in the New York Times charting the trend. The Mammals -- the poppiest of the old-timey bands -- make a joyfully precarious sound and play just as loose with tradition; older fans of string-band music wouldn't amused by their drum kit, for instance. By contrast, Old Crow Medicine Show are traditional, but they're hardly strict preservationists: On their second album, "Big Iron World," Woody Guthrie's proto-feminist "Union Maid" gets a blast of mountain air, and the rag "Cocaine Habit" takes a direct swipe at Karl Rove.
With far less hype than old-time or freak-folk, another folk trend has emerged: Virtually every sub-MTV stratum of punk-rock has gone back to basics, some all the way to the logical acoustic conclusion. 2006 has seen startlingly traditional-sounding solo debuts from the frontmen of three influential punk bands: Jake Burns of the Northern Irish '70s punk band Stiff Little Fingers, late-'80s hardcore icon Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, and Tim Barry of the '90s band Avail.
Ghost Mice is a Bloomington, Ind., duo that bridges the earnestness of Phil Ochs with a raw, do-it-yourself aesthetic. Ghost Mice singer Chris Clavin, who has provided a locus for the folk-punk trend with his own label, Plan-It-X, offers a theory to explain the recent emergence of so many seemingly unrelated folk currents.
"Music is getting boring again and the radio is dreadful," Clavin says. "Loud rock bands do the same old thing, cool dudes in tight pants and pretty girls with lipstick singing about nothing. I think people want more storytelling, being social animals like we are."
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About the writer
Andrew Marcus is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.
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