Joni Mitchell meets Mary Lou Lord, with a splash of Quilt. Ruth Garbus has been making the freak folk scene on the New England circuit and elsewhere. What is freak folk anyway? It might just be a weak descriptor for folk music that consciously avoids some of the nostalgic pitfalls of the genre, while forwarding its strong features. Like what? Simple elements weaved together to build worlds with arch poetry and sing-song chord progressions, on the back of a single strummer. 

Our highlighted track “Slusher” plays it straight, with Cubist song structure that keeps the action on tilt like a Garfunkel jammer.

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