As selfish as it seems, I sometimes wish that Ben Chasny-- for more than a decade now, the architect of one of America's best-ever psychedelic syndicates, Six Organs of Admittance-- would sit still. Across more than a dozen albums and even more collaborations, Chasny has proven the restless sort who bounces between sounds, structures, and ideas with the curiosity of a precocious teenager. Scrappy meditations for acoustic guitar, epic drone escapades for ensembles, breezy folk-rock ruminations for a full band: Chasny has played it all, sometimes on the same album and oftentimes with mixed results. Some of his most riveting work brushes against some of his most rote, with some of his most inspired pieces settling alongside his most insipid. The discography of the unquestionably talented Chasny, then, has been a fascinating if frustrating listen, where the attempt has always seemed more important than the execution.
Asleep on the Floodplain, Chasny's fifth for Drag City since 2005, again finds the Six Organs mastermind eager to roam. "S/word and Leviathan", for instance, builds for 10 minutes through layers of dulcimer melodies, electronic rumbles, and harmonium sustains before arriving, in its final three minutes, at a mantra inspired by theology pioneer Catherine Keller. The tunes around it, though, don't even cross the three-minute mark. "Poppies" is a kinetic 61-second adventure for acoustic guitar, built on a theme that lends itself to repetition and long variations that come to a sudden stop. The marathon's other bookend, "A New Name on an Old Cement Bridge", is another instrumental, but this one's a concentric beauty, where the acoustic melody moves with graceful deliberation over a harmonium drone.
Three more tracks on Asleep are instrumentals-- the cresting opener "Above A Desert I've Never Seen" the glowing "Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us", and the curling "Saint of Fishermen". But Chasny turns in one of his best pop songs to date, too, "Light of the Light," a hummable little hymn to impermanence. As on 2009's Luminous Night, Asleep on the Floodplain again attempts to corral Chasny's range; this time, it actually works, gathering all of his impulses into one of his more accessible, endearing albums to date. On "Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us", electric guitar chords drift through another harmonium haze. Chasny's winding acoustic improvisations eventually goad its slow roll forward. Majestic and lumbering, the tune suggests drone wizard Tom Carter collaborating with young British guitarist James Blackshaw. Mostly, though, it feels like a strong synthesis of Chasny's interests: Despite its variability, Asleep on the Floodplain is like a cohesive record not because Chasny favors any one style over another (he doesn't) but because he feels confident and comfortable with each look. It's as though he's roved enough that he finally knows how to finesse each of his interests into something seamles.
About six years ago, Six Organs of Admittance was something like a buzz band, swept into the rising tide of what was called freak-folk or New Weird America. Devendra Banhart placed Chasny alongside Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, Jack Rose, Antony and more than a dozen others for Arthur Magazine's compilation, The Golden Apples of the Sun, he got a Drag City deal, and his rock band, Comets on Fire, was signed to Sub Pop. But as freak-folk as a fad has faded, Chasny's star has suffered due less to a lack of musical quality and more to a lack of stylistic consistency. He's been difficult to label. Has it been folk rock or freak folk, free folk or just plain folk? Asleep on the Floodplain triumphantly answers back none of those. Rather, Chasny has distilled all of his impulses and obsessions-- slow drones and brisk picking, solemn mumbles and cheery riffs, ponderous lyrics, and ruminative instrumentals-- into 43 muted, marvelous minutes. It's the sort of record that finds the workmanlike Chasny doing what he does better than most, all at once but never too quickly.
