Vetiver was chosen to lead off Devendra Banhart's Golden Apples of the Sun compilation, the modern folk equivalent of landing a single on Top of the Pops. But its song, "Angel's Share", was summarily blown from ken by Joanna Newsom's "Bridges and Balloons"-- by many accounts the national anthem of freak-folk. On the LP front, the quartet came up short, too: Its eponymous debut trumped products from Cocorosie, White Magic, and Josephine Foster, but lost publicity to critical darlings Espers and Iron & Wine. Having Banhart on guitar wasn't the boon you'd expect either: Judging by reactions to late-year solo bid Nino Rojo, the gangly dynamo couldn't escape the shadow of his own Rejoicing in the Hands, much less curry favor for Andy Cabic and co.

A year later, the freak-folk radicals are trying a softened stance. Six Organs' School of the Flower, a spindly psych jamboree, may cling with both hands to weird '04, but forthcoming releases from Banhart and Animal Collective come lathered and rinsed. Between finds Vetiver, once conservative by comparison, in perfect consonance with the gang-- and the band hardly had to change a thing.