In the liner notes to Ancestral Swamp, Michael Hurley's 20th full-length in more than 40 years, there's a photograph of the musician holding a cartoon mask-- green papier-mâché skin, red-yellow eyes, long trumpet snout, topped with a floppy beret-- to obscure his face and shocks of white hair. He's not hiding, necessarily, just changing form. While never quite as committed to anonymity as, say, Jandek, Hurley certainly cultivates a playful elusiveness, with a history that traces through a decades-long solo career and projects like Have Moicy to his early days as a Greenwich Village folkie. His unforthcoming demeanor gives his rustic folk music a certain rugged charm and his career rootlessness a certain romance. Known for bouncing pinball-like from one label to another, he finds a home, perhaps only briefly, on Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic's Gnomonsong label for Ancestral Swamp, a collection of new and old tunes that all feature Hurley's backporch bluster and homey picking and fiddling.
The album is a portrait of the artist as an old coot. Backed by long-time collaborators Dave Reisch and Lewi Longmire and relative newcomer Tara Jane O'Neil, Hurley has a high time playing up the gristle in his voice and the eccentric opacity of his lyrics. On opener "Knockando", he bends his lines upward until he's warbling in the attic of his register about serving up "a glass of no-can-do," the junkyard logic of the words making complete sense even as the subtle and, yes, sophisticated music contradicts them. He certainly can do. Hurley harmonizes sweetly with O'Neil on "El Dorado" (based on an Edgar Allen Poe poem) and stand-out "Light Green Fellow", a gentle ode to nonconformity which was reportedly recorded without him knowing. These songs have the air of being tossed off-- things not created, but rooted out of the dirt. Even the album title, according to Hurley's blog (yes, he does have a blog), is a reference to the well of historic folk ditties from which he draws his inspiration.
But make no mistake: Although it's difficult to think of the staccato guitar plucks on "Streets of Laredo" or the hounddog howls on "1st Precinct Blues" as anything other than musical serendipity, these are exceptionally crafted and thought-out tunes, the work of a master of the spontaneous and the shambolic. On the other hand, Hurley's devil-may-care approach means that for all its eccentric appeal, Ancestral Swamp rambles considerably, loses focus often, and ultimately feels pretty long-winded. Even so, it's hard not to discount these particular faults as part of the performer's charm. He may be folk's Boo Radley, but Hurley is also the sage of mountain: He'll tell you the secret of life, but you'll be puzzling over it for the rest of your days.
