Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Pitstop: The Acorn

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The discovery of Ottawa's The Acorn is completely due to the new Listen With feature on Facebook and Spotify. I was listening with my friend Corey to a playlist I had made when suddenly he switched tracks and The Acorn's "Crooked Legs" came on with it's bustling percussion and delicate finger-picking that sounded not unlike Lord Huron is they leaned more into their folk influence. My introduction came with a warning however: Corey mentioned that no other song quite stacked up to "Crooked Legs". And it's not hard to see why: "Crooked Legs" pairs up ukulele and marimba along with the much more accessible guitar-bass-drum set up to create a blend of modern and indigenous folk music. In fact that same blend carries on throughout all of 2008's Glory Hope Mountain, an exploration of songwriter's Rolf Klausener's Central American roots.

Even in their debut The Pink Ghosts and latest album No Ghost, The Acorn seem to be all about perfecting the balance between old and new - modern and traditional. Slipping acoustic guitars alongside jangly and fluttering electric, punctuating heartfelt ideas and musical phrases with affirming blips, bleeps, buzzes, and a wide array of computer-generated sounds. And so while "Crooked Legs" might very well be their best song, and Glory Hope Mountain their best album to date, there's something to be respected  about The Acorn's experimentation and interesting spin on the electronic folk genre and I for one couldn't me more excited about hearing more.

Get a taste of The Acorn with this video for the aforementioned best track "Crooked Legs":



If you like what you hear, you can check out The Acorn's music on Spotify.

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