vetiver: been so long

wow! it's saturday and today is a hockey tournament day. a day that usually involves the consumption of a large breakfast somewhere, lots of coffee, usually a beery afternoon break, and a fair bit of waiting between games that is filled with poker. not my usual saturday fare. the challenge is to find the frenetic boyishness of the players and ride it like a wave. to be honest, today i'd really like to settle back in peacefullness and do some writing, some reading, some cleaning up. i'd really like to listen to some peaceful music as well. but i also love tournament days for their silliness and especially for the fact that my dawsonboy has such a wickedgood time.

just over a year ago a wave of music crossed my path that loosely fell under the unfortunate genre name of freak folk. music that grew clearly from the world of folk but which was tinged with psychedelia and linked itself in terms of its colour and flavour with the haight-ashbury scene of the late sixties.

devendra banhart appeared to be the fire inside the genre and so i checked out his work and naturally came across the vetiverse.


vetiver (in case you’re interested) is a perennial grass native to india.

vetiver had been around for a couple of years by the time i came across them and had released a cd eponymously entitled “vetiver”. this was folowed two years later (2006) by the album to which i’m drawing your attention today “to find me gone”.

here’s a live version of my favourite piece of music off this disc “been so long” by vetiver.



if this music reaches you and you are interested in hearing more, then (amazing as it might seem), vetiver has provided a stream of the entire album on their website so that you can listen to every song for free! i did just that before buying the download of the disc.

in my own view there is only one song that is not up to the sterling quality of the rest but i’ll let you decide for yourself if you find even one flaw in this extraordinary music. here’s the link for the streaming version of to find me gone