Born out of some mythically fogless San Francisco, the acid folk/rock collective Citay embody those parts of the afternoon whereby the sun, always present but never so much so as to be blinding, feels like it’s never going to go away and you, lying in the grass of some wonderfully maintained park space or public square, are rendered immortal. Over the course of three albums — 2006’s self-titled, 2007’s Little Kingdom and now, via Dead Oceans, 2010’s Dream Get Together — have delicately balanced avant garde fervor with traditional songwriting, with results both fresh and intriguing. Unlike many in this or that subset of art rock, Citay prove that experimental music doesn’t necessarily have to be abrasive.

Tim Green (The Fucking Champs) once again acts as producer for Dream Get Together, and it seems as though the title is nothing more than an apt description of what, by the estimation of principal songwriter, acoustic guitarist and occasional vocalist Ezra Feinberg, took place on the album. Joining Feinberg in Citay for Dream Get Together are electric guitarists Sean Smith and Josh Pollack, bassist Diego Gonzalez, drummer Warren Huegel and vocalists Tahlia Harbour and Meryl Press, and while the names may not be immediately recognizable in terms of tabloid covers, some were around for Little Kingdom, and it’s abundantly clear in listening to the record that Feinberg knew exactly what he was doing when compiling this lineup of his band.

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Back in November sometime, I found the All That is Heavy webstore of StonerRock.com was selling Barr‘s Skogsbo is the Place, and knowing nothing about the band (I’d later come to find out they opened a European tour for Iron and Wine, but that did little to endear them to me), but digging the gray-on-white album art and the item description that included the words “melancholic exploration of pastoral acoustic landscapes,” figured I had nothing to lose in checking out the mp3 of opener “Summer Wind.”

After downloading that song and spending the next month playing it over and over and over again and constantly meaning to buy the record but always getting sidetracked by other purchases and/or the tanking economy, I finally got drunk one December night and, at three in the morning, liquored up and by myself, I downloaded the entirety of Skogsbo is the Place from a Blogspot site I can’t even remember the name of and kept myself awake with it until the sun started coming up and I fell asleep on the couch.

I finally put in my purchase order after a couple days of feeling rightfully guilty, and when the digipak arrived, I immediately put the album on and it has rarely left my side since. With all this stoner rock and doom and all these loud riffs and songs about speeding cars, piloting dunes and the end of the world, Barr‘s nature-reverent neo-folk is an ideal change of pace and palate cleanser. No, it’s not exactly stoner rock, but the soothing Neil Youngisms of “Calling My Name” — which you can hear on the band’s MySpace page — make me want to be much warmer than the valley in March will allow, and that’s not a bad thing.

So consider this a “You should check out this band” recommendation from one friend to another, and if you don’t dig it, well, it’s not like clicking a MySpace link costs money, so you’re not out anything. It’s Swedish, if that helps sell the quality.

…the agricultural black metal wizards from Olympia have put a digipak CD version of their previously vinyl-only EP Malevolent Grain up for sale on their website. The copy I ordered came in the mail yesterday and it rules, so buy it while you can or suffer the eBay consequences later on. Female vocals all over the place, very ambient, but still heavy and natural-sounding. You can’t really miss if you’re a fan or a nerdy collector of things soon to be out of print.

In terms of heavy ambience, there are few in the realm of black metal who do it as well as Olympia, WA‘s Wolves in the Throne Room. Helmed by brothers Nathan (guitar/vocals) and Aaron Weaver (drums), the band has been igniting cross-genre acclaim since debuting with Diadem of 12 Stars (Vendlus) in 2006. The response to that record was so strong that it led to Southern Lord signing them and releasing follow-up Two Hunters. They explored their trance-inducing side on this year’s Malevolent Grain EP and are already in the process of issuing the next full-length, Black Cascade. Known almost as much for their strong stance on environmental issues as for their music, the band makes a strong argument in favor of paying attention to the latter with this latest work.

I’ll spare the wax poetry since the review of Black Cascade went up just a couple days ago. Certainly there’s enough of it there. In the meantime, after the jump you can read an extended interview with Aaron Weaver about the troubles of touring and playing corporately-sponsored functions such as the recent Scion Fest in Atlanta, keeping the balance between clarity and a natural sound, and tightening the Wolves in the Throne Room songwriting process so the songs can be better presented live. Dig it.

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As is bound to happen with any band whose personality is so manifest in their output, Olympia, WA‘s Wolves in the Throne Room have found themselves in the position where their music has almost taken a back seat to their character. Reports of tours scheduled around the harvest, living on a farm and playing shows in the dense Pacific Northwestern forests have abounded since their Diadem of 12 Stars (Vendlus) debut in 2006, but they took on a life all their own when Southern Lord put out Two Hunters to such widespread acclaim in 2007.

For their part in it, the four-piece has clarified their environmental extremist position on their blog and I don’t feel the need to repeat it here. What matters more when than the band’s opinion on human contributions to global warming when I listen to new album Black Cascade is the music. Quite a novelty, I know.

Like Two Hunters — since which the band has released Live at Roadburn 2008 and the Malevolent Grain EP, both vinyl-only — Black Cascade boasts four extended tracks that when put together reach upwards of 50 minutes. Where this record separates itself from the last, however, is in the songwriting. Not that they’re suddenly churning out three minute pop songs or anything like that, but the movements of opener “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” flesh themselves out in a manner befitting a band who have worked hard to establish themselves as a unique entity. Wolves in the Throne Room are maturing and their sound is becoming very much their own.

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