Milkweed

Folklore 1979 Album Launch Milkweed describe their sound as ‘Slacker Trad’ which is both true and somehow insufficient. On the face of it their musical concerns are transatlantic – they follow the rich creative line that runs between British traditional music and the songs and tunes of the eastern United States. In reality their scope is global, and rooted in deep time, with influences from prehistory bleeding into a troubled and troubling modern era. As a result their music doesn’t sit easily anywhere, but ricochets between bewitching Appalachian folk music and disconcerting hauntological. The duo’s third work in as many years, Folklore 1979 (2024) takes its lyrics exclusively from an academic journal published by the Folklore Society and renders it into a piece of music that blurs the lines between what is found and what is created. Across a beguiling 11 minutes, Milkweed unspool like a single disjointed dream narrative, taking in ritual, extinction, migration, esoteric cosmogony and Arthurian legend.