Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice

This sprawling New York–based freak-folk collective, led by James Toth (who’s recorded solo as Wooden Wand, minus the Vanishing Voice), play some of the scene’s loosest, least crossover-concerned music. Unlike Animal Collective or Devendra Banhart, who seem interested in making room in pop for weird textural digressions and nonsense about spirit fairies, the Wooden Wand people probably couldn’t care less about making their music accessible to outsiders. On most of Gipsy Freedom , their highest-profile release to date (it’s on the Kill Rock Stars imprint 5RC), that self-imposed isolation results in long, borderline-aimless free-noise jams in which a few notes of an acid-rock guitar solo might constitute a highlight. (“There isn’t really a whole lot to latch onto here, fellas,” someone mutters at one point.) A few times, though, WWVV strike some flower-power gold in spite of themselves: “Dread Effigy” is a gorgeous, feedback-drenched lullaby, and “Don’t Love the Liar” rivals stuff by Black Mountain in its hippie-metal menace. Tellingly, the latter lasts a whole minute and a half.