Espers was an American psychedelic folk band from Philadelphia, United States, that was part of the emerging indie folk scene. They formed in 2002 as a trio of singer-songwriter Greg Weeks, Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons but later expanded to a sextet including Otto Hauser, Helena Espvall and Chris
Smith. They released their self-titled debut in 2004 on Time-Lag Records and followed that with an album of cover songs, The Weed Tree, in 2005. This release featured the band's versions of songs by artists as diverse as Nico, The Durutti Column and Blue Öyster Cult. In 2006 the band released their third full-length album, II (presumably so called because it was their second album of original material), on Drag City Records. Their fourth album, III, was released on October 20, 2009.
Espers' meshing and merging of synergistic elements and cosmic reverberations construct a trans-
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HELENA ESPVALL
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formative experience for all involved, but for the past several years, the only way to be experienced as such was by listening to their amazing records. Espers are known for sounds that conjure hazy, cumulus clouds of third-eye lucidity, riding pure musicianship and intuitive chemistry to advanced states of ecstasy where band and audience intertwine.
The band reunited for a trio of performances in 2018 and considered writing new material but decided against it. Their first two albums were reissued by Drag City in 2020. Espers gently faded out just as
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GREG WEEKS
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they faded in, on a billowing, beautiful, undoubtedly dark and cumulous cloud of psilocybin-laced folk touched by occasional thunderbolts of electricity. Now, with the looming possibility of reissues of its brief catalog — four woodsy, gauzy, tactile albums and EPs — co-Epsers Baird, Greg Weeks, Brooke Sietinsons, Helena Espvall and Otto Hauser return to their rural, ancient-to-the-future roots tied (and unmoored from) folk’s traditions.
Considering the foundational elements of Espers and what they did as a unit, Baird believes it allowed her to better understand an apply more collaborative elements in her own music going forward. “The solo work is a great outlet, but the magic of true collaboration, not to sound corny, is amazing,” she
says. “What you can accomplish through that is bigger when you’re not focusing on yourself.” There was not a pinpoint moment as to what folded Espers. They finished commitments to Espers III, and band members were on the move, and dealt with life issues. “And death. We had missed the memorial for our friend [Philly folk guitarist] Jack Rose, and that was weighing on us. There was just a lot of life change going on, and we just never reconvened. It wasn’t a discussion. It just stopped.”
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MEG BAIRD
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It was like sand or dust. Espers blew away. Presently, that same sand has blown the way of Philadelphia and local rehearsal stages, where they’re just happy to be reunited and playing old songs, “rather than
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BROOK SIETINSONS
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worrying about new ones. We all live in such scattered spaces,” stated Baird. “When we’re all playing together and flowing, and we’re getting to enjoy the music and the voices, it’s great. And in Philly, it is the people that will make this special.“ Their music has retained a mysterious, unknowable vitality that, in the name of their original intention, continues to express Espers' individualism, optimism and deeply empathetic soul.
ESPERS - ESPERS I 2004
The first Espers album (2004) in back in print and circulation and the world. As a trio with some
featured guests Meg Baird, Greg Weeks and Brooke Sietinsons created delicate-yet-full-toned arrangements strewn with classical and traditional touches, acid leads and a melancholy, folkish air. Espers idealism was rooted in an ongoing flow of ideas that continue to this day, and their debut album retains their mystic air, early two decades later.
Acid-folk maestro Greg Weeks' psychedelic trio Espers -- with Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons -- has created a delicate and blissfully unsettling debut. Weeks' autoharp on tracks like "Flowery Noontide" conjures images of home-baked '60s folk played by sincere and optimistic flower children and dark and
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MEG BAIRD
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dreamy drifters. "Meadow," similarly, recalls the sunshine and doom chamber pop and subtle acoustic guitar of Donovan on "Susan on the West Coast Waiting" or "Atlantis," or Fairport Convention. "Riding" could easily fit on the Super Furry Animals brilliant and catchy West Coast pop collection Phantom Power -- but then "Voices" is nearly as hazy and Far Eastern as Six Organs of Admittance, and "Hearts & Daggers" is over eight minutes of druggy, medieval-inspired British baroque noise.
Espers' music is entirely incongruous with the trends of 2003-2004 -- from the devil-may-care rock of
Jet and the Strokes, to the over-the-top, cosmic, and sexy wunder-metal of the Darkness. But you can't help but feel that Espers are onto something -- not quite the soft-is-the-new-loud irony of Belle & Sebastian, but a more sinister and trippy picture of a foreboding horizon in the midst of the most beautiful sunset.
Espers – Espers
Label: Wichita – WEBB084CD
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK & Europe
Released: 2004
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Folk, Folk Rock, Acoustic
TRACKS
01. Flowery Noontide 4:10
02. Meadow 4:11
03. Riding 4:09
04. Voices 3:44
05. Hearts & Daggers 8:34
06. Byss & Abyss 6:03
07. Daughter 3:03
08. Travel Mountains 6:30
LINE - UP
Acoustic Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar [Acoustic Twelve String Guitar], Finger Cymbals, Chimes, Harmonica – Brooke Sietinsons
Cello – Margie Wienk
Flute – Laura Baird
Viola – Matt Everett
Vocals [Vox] – Tara Burke
Vocals [Vox], Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Guitar [Bowed Guitar], Electronics [Acid Leads], Dulcimer – Meg Baird
Vocals [Vox], Electric Guitar, Electronics [Acid Leads], Dulcimer, Keyboards [Keys], Recorder, Autoharp, Bass, Violin, Chimes – Greg Weeks
Flac Size: 260 MB
ESPERS - THE WEED TREE 2005
In the wake of their celebrated first album, Espers recruited a few more members in 2005 and set to
making an album
interpreting some of their favorite inspirational songs — not just traditional folk numbers, but songs by Nico, Michael Hurley, Durutti Column, Blue Öyster Cult and even Espers! After years out of print, The Weed Tree has grown back again.
Like a reincarnated Pentangle for the neo-psychedelic folk crowd, newly expanded Philadelphia sextet the Espers come full circle on their intoxicating EP The Weed Tree. Less murky than their self-titled debut, Tree is a bright, fluid, and promising collection of six covers and one original that sees the group
poised for an explosive (quietly, that is) full-length record in the near future. The Espers mine the traditional ("Rosemary Lane," "Black Is the Color") with grace and reverence, keeping the framework steeped in enough British folk acoustics that when a keyboard appears out of nowhere it's not at all intrusive; rather it's the lightening bolt in a gray sky that illuminates the crows below. Speaking of dark imagery, the collective's creepy rendition of Blue Öyster Cult's "Flaming Telepaths" from 1974's Secret Treaties stays surprisingly true to its source.
A haunting version of Manchester, England, post-punk outfit Durutti Column's "Tomorrow" is also a
highlight, with the refreshingly clear voices of Meg Baird and Greg Weeks finding the perfect middle ground between despair and serenity. The Weed Tree could have been an exercise in tedium, but like fellow interpreter Alasdair Roberts, the Espers have more than a love for the sound of late-'60s acid folk; they have a vision for its future.
Espers – The Weed Tree
Label: Locust Music – L 73
Format: CD, Album
Country: US
Released: Oct 4, 2005
Genre: Rock, Psychedelic Folk
Style: Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01.Rosemary Lane 4:38Written-By – Trad.
02.Tomorrow 4:06Written-By – Durutti Column
03.Black Is The Color 5:33Written-By – Trad.
04.Afraid 3:11Written-By – Nico
05.Blue Mountain 4:47Written-By – Michael Hurley
06.Flaming Telepaths 9:58Written-By – Blue Oyster Cult
07.Dead King 4:39Written-By – Espers
LINE - UP
Acoustic Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar [Acoustic Twelve String Guitar], Finger Cymbals, Chimes, Harmonica - Brooke Sietinsons
Bass - Chris Smith
Singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist - Greg Weeks
Guitar and cello - Helena Espvall
Vocals [Vox], Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Guitar [Bowed Guitar], Electronics [Acid Leads], Dulcimer – Meg Baird
Drums, Percussion - Otto Hauser
Flac Size: 235 MB
ESPERS - ESPERS II 2006
Where Espers' self-titled debut album was drenched in sunshine melodies, traditional folk influences, and psychedelic acid-folk sounds ranging from Fairport Convention and Donovan to Six Organs of Admittance and Super Furry Animals, and their creepy, apocalyptic EP -- who else would cover the
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OTTO HAUSER
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Durutti Column, Nico, Michael Hurley, and the Blue Öyster Cult on the same record as a reverent version of "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" -- neither of these offerings truly prepare the listener for II. This Philly quintet fronted by Greg Weeks, Meg Baird, and Brooke Sietinsons have gone over the edge this time while retaining just a modicum of restraint to hold all the pieces together. The proof is in the kool-aid so to speak.
The opener is the sharp, gloomy, 17th century-styled Elizabethan folk of "Dead Queen," that feels more like Pentangle, and it's countered in "Widow's Weed," the very next track, by a slew of screeing electric guitars atop a snare-heavy drumkit awash in feedback that never quite lets go of the early 1800s in its
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HELENA ESPVALL
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melody. Here Eastern modal drone meets trad-Anglo balladry in an opium den of thieves and warriors. "Cruel Storm," uses a sparse wash of modal jazz chords to create an open-tuned dirge that floats on an augmented key elegance; it is adorned by skeletal percussion and whispering feedback in the outer reaches. Its restraint is deceptive as Baird's vocals are a bead hinting that this cruel storm is not a disaster because the disaster has already happened.
The final track, "Moon Occults the Sun," finds Weeks slowly sawing cellos, acoustic bright, rounded
electrics, and droning single-string modal guitars flowing through Weeks' and Baird's voices, ushering in varying degrees of clouds, darkness, and the spirit of black night itself. Once more, one can hear the Velvets creeping through the underbrush, but they're not the only ones -- here is where Comus and Fresh Maggots offer their blunted blades, black with mud and mercury under a sky where the moon has turned to blood. Dumbek is a Doric transistorized organ, here fuzzed-out over intensifying guitars and doggedly persistent basses carrying forth the banner of a folk music that never existed for any folk at all, but merely as the face of their fears. (If "Cortez the Killer" had been composed by a court minstrel's band instead of a raggedy-ass, wasted Neil Young, it might have sounded like this.) All of these songs
are sure to be long-ranging from just over five to nearly nine minutes -- but it's what gives Espers the chance not only to seamlessly blend their many influences -- it isn't their fault all this stuff had been done before -- but to create a kind of ancient-to-modern blend of Anglo song that points to a murky future while erasing an even sketchier past. Espers II is both wondrous and troubling.
Espers – II
Label: Wichita – WEBB110CD
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK
Released: Jul 31, 2006
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. Dead Queen 8:13
02. Widow's Weed 6:51
03. Cruel Storm 5:17
04. Children Of Stone 8:54
05. Mansfield And Cyclops 5:57
06. Dead King 8:02
07. Moon Occults The Sun 6:47
LINE - UP
Acoustic Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar [Acoustic Twelve String Guitar], Finger Cymbals, Chimes, Harmonica - Brooke Sietinsons
Bass - Chris Smith
Singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist - Greg Weeks
Guitar and cello - Helena Espvall
Vocals [Vox], Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Guitar [Bowed Guitar], Electronics [Acid Leads], Dulcimer – Meg Baird
Drums, Percussion - Otto Hauser
Flac Size: 368 MB
ESPERS - ESPERS III 2009
The core of the band features vocalist Meg Baird, and multi-instrumentalists Brooke Sietinsons, and Greg Weeks (who also engineered and produced the set), with Vetiver drummer Otto Hauser and cellist Helena Espvall (who appeared on II as well) rounding out the band. Just compare the first two numbers
on III: they are ample evidence of an evolving, more complex songwriting process. There is the near-jaunty folk-rock of "I Can't See Clear," with Baird's alto falling directly into the double-waltz time of the acoustic guitars, bassline, and other stringed instruments until the chorus, where melodically distorted electric guitars are added to the mix and push the track to the margin.
The melody line is pronounced, repetitive, and catchy -- but the subject matter is anything but light. "The Road of Golden Dust" that features Baird's and Weeks' voices twinned on the verses, is creepier, murkier, and far more haunting. Its lilting melody slithers alone on a lithe backbeat and hypnotic guitar patters. Its notes are much more restrained, but the instrumental passages are labyrinthine. "That Moon Song," with its country-ish tinge, done at a cough syrup pace, blends electric guitars, keyboards, what
sounds like a Wurlitzer, and reverb effects along with Espvall's cello and Baird's vocal to create a texture worthy of dreaming. The elegantly slow yet piercing electric guitar breaks morph it into full-on soundscape though its songlike qualities remain. The thick, cushiony textures of distorted instruments collide in "That Which Darkly Thrives" as Weeks' voice hovers and floats above the only clearly heard instruments in the mix -- those of the rhythm section; Baird's backing vocal cascades into Weeks', pouring it all through a nearly cinematic sense of the ethereal. "Colony," whose lyrics are impure poetry, is flat-out gorgeous in a slightly sinister, Pentangle kind of way.
The album closer, "Trollslända," stands in sharp contrast with its breezy, weave of sprightly bassline, clipped snare and hi-hat, phased electric guitars, and reverbed acoustic six-strings as Weeks and Baird sing the verses in harmony. It's a lullaby of sorts that melds the ancient with a present-tense melancholy.
The cello solo by Espvall becomes another voice in the track, and is one of the loveliest things she's ever played on a record. The cut's climax is one of the high points on any Espers record. This band may take their time between releases now, but they get exponentially more sophisticated and adventurous, not only in their composed material, but in their approach to making records. This is just stellar top to bottom.
Espers – III
Label: Wichita – WEBB235CDL
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK
Released: Oct 2009
Genre: Rock, Pop, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Acoustic
TRACKS
01. I Can't See Clear 4:14
02. The Road Of Golden Dust 5:08
03. Caroline 3:22
04. The Pearl 4:49
05. That Which Darkly Thrives 5:14
06. Sightings 5:13
07. Meridian 3:14
08. Another Moon Song 6:04
09. Colony 4:19
10. Trollslända 5:54
LINE - UP
Acoustic Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar [Acoustic Twelve String Guitar], Finger Cymbals, Chimes, Harmonica -
Brooke SietinsonsSinger, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist -
Greg WeeksGuitar and cello -
Helena EspvallVocals [Vox], Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Guitar [Bowed Guitar], Electronics [Acid Leads], Dulcimer –
Meg BairdDrums, Percussion -
Otto HauserFlac Size: 319 MB
