Freak-Folk Music: 4 Notable Freak-Folk Acts

Freak folk is an umbrella term for a subgenre of folk music with a distinctly psychedelic flavor. Freak folk—alternatively known as psychedelic folk, acid folk, or psych-folk—encompasses decades’ worth of sounds. Back in the sixties, original freak-folk acts, like Donovan and Vashti Bunyan, began embracing sounds outside of long-standing American folk-music traditions. Indie-folk artists from the 1990s and 2000s, like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, evoked these earlier, free-spirited efforts.

While traditional folk music features acoustic instruments and pulls from many influences, including the blues, European balladry, and songs from rural America, freak folk is a more diverse musical genre that embraces a wide variety of sounds. As a result, musicians who perform on acoustic instruments, like Banhart and Sufjan Stevens, have earned freak-folk status, as do experimental and indie rock bands like Animal Collective and Six Organs of Admittance, who incorporate folk songwriting into rock arrangements with electric instruments.

The history of freak folk begins in the 1960s and resumes in the 1990s and 2000s:

• Origins: The roots of freak folk began in the 1960s when artists like singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, the Holy Modal Rounders, and guitarist John Fahey created folk music that stood in contrast to the more traditional folk sounds of Bob Dylan. These artists employed avant-garde arrangements and exotic tunings and explored introspective or surreal subjects. Several of these alternative folk artists, like Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan, rose to fame. Others, like Bunyan and England’s Incredible String Band, remained cult favorites or obscurities.
• Revival: Many music historians point to the reissue of lost ‘60s and ‘70s folk albums like Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day as the flashpoint for the freak-folk revival in the 1990s. Historians also cite early albums by Animal Collective, an experimental Maryland-based group, as primary influences on the revival, along with the “New Weird America” scene—an underground folk subgenre that drew on more avant-garde influences. The earliest successes in the new freak-folk movement were Devendra Banhart, whose music and look evoked the freewheeling hippie movement, and Joanna Newsom, who enchanted new and veteran folk fans with her multi-instrumental abilities.
• Mainstream success: Freak folk’s watershed year was 2004. Banhart, who released his breakout second album, Oh Me Oh My, in 2002, curated the compilation CD The Golden Apples of the Sun for the indie magazine Arthur. The album introduced many major modern freak-folk players—Newsom, Josephine Foster, CocoRosie, and Espers—who debuted albums over the next two years. The release brought Bunyan’s music to a new audience and helped revive her career.
• Influences: The freak-folk universe expanded in the 2010s, embracing older and new artists and redefining its sonic boundaries. Vintage players like Karen Dalton and Linda Perhacs, whose recordings confounded folk audiences in the 1960s and ‘70s, became foundational figures.
• Contemporary sounds: A diverse array of twenty-first-century musicians earned the freak-folk label, including the electrified, off-the-grid duo Brightblack Morning Bright, the experimental indie group Xiu Xiu, and San Francisco’s Vetiver, which toured with Banhart, Bunyan, and Newsom. Language of Stone Records—a record label that Espers’ Greg Weeks co-founded with his wife, Jessica—introduced listeners to many up-and-coming freak-folk acts.

Several characteristics typify the sound of freak folk, including:

1. 1. Instruments: Freak folk bands use many of the instruments associated with traditional folk: acoustic guitars and other stringed instruments, including banjo—a favorite of Sufjan Stevens—and harp, like Joanna Newsom. Acts often use unusual and eclectic musical instruments, including toy instruments and percussion associated with drum circles, like congas and bongos. Many groups use electric instruments—guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards—normally associated with rock music.
2. 2. Production: Freak-folk records aim for a sense of timelessness while evoking the psychedelia that inspired it. Depending on the artist, freak-folk records can sound lo-fi or highly polished; avant-garde and experimental elements, such as drone, tape loops, and improvisation, also appear on certain freak-folk releases.
3. 3. Vocals: Vocal styles on freak-folk records echo the eclectic nature of the genre itself but almost always feature intensity and commitment to the song’s message. Freak-folk singers range from the plaintive, child-like vocals of Joanna Newsom to the high and lonesome warble of Devendra Banhart. Others, like the members of Animal Collective and Brightblack Morning Light, favor a version of the high harmonies from traditional folk.

There are many notable freak-folk bands in the genre’s history, including:

1. 1. Animal Collective: The experimental quartet Animal Collective is a foundational band in freak-folk history. The band’s affinity for high, lonesome vocal harmony and sheets of droning guitar and electronic noise, often created with vintage instruments, placed them firmly in freak-folk territory when the genre returned to the spotlight in the early 2000s. With longtime members Avey Tare (née David Portner) and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), the band has issued ten studio albums, numerous EPs and contributed to the soundtrack to the film Crestone in 2021.
2. 2. Grizzly Bear: The New York-based indie band Grizzly Bear grew from singer Edward Droste’s solo effort, recorded under the Grizzly Bear moniker. After expanding to a quartet, Grizzly Bear’s psychedelic folk and indie rock sound won praise from artists like Radiohead, who invited them to open for their 2008 summer tour. Subsequent album releases reached the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and Rock charts, but following their 2017 record, Painted Ruins, Droste departed the band.
3. 3. Joanna Newsom: Singer and multi-instrumentalist Joanna Newsom draws on an eclectic array of influences—from her classical harp training to the mountain music of the American South—for her critically acclaimed album releases. She self-released her first two albums before signing with Drag City for her 2004 LP, The Milk-Eyed Mender. Positive response to her music led to tours with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver and 2006’s Ys, her first album to chart on the Billboard 200. Since then, Newsom topped the Billboard Alternative Albums chart with 2015’s Divers and explored an acting career in films such as Inherent Vice.
4. 4. Rio en Medio: Singer and ukulele player Danielle Stech-Homsy, who performs under the stage name Rio en Medio, earned a following among freak-folk listeners for her intricate but fragile compositions. After receiving a copy of her 2007 debut album, The Bride of Dynamite, Devendra Banhart signed her to his record label, Gnomonsong. Her second release, Frontier (2008), preceded collaborations with major freak-folk figures like Vashti Bunyan, Grizzly Bear, and Vetiver.

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