The album opens on a frail country-folk note with "The Clearing", a simple, unadorned introduction to Spider with vocal and acoustic guitar. Like Vashti Bunyan, Spider's voice is whispery soft, plain and heartbreaking.
"Don't Be Afraid, I've Just Come To Say Goodbye" introduces the very tasteful electric pianos which add a great deal to the album as well backward-recorded pads and very pretty love-in flute parts and Pet Sounds gentle horns – these last two elements could have been added in greater quantities to the album to great effect.
Things take a turn towards the psychedelic on "I Don't Know If She Had Any Teeth Because She Never Smiled" with eerie, reverb-drenched drones and shimmers. Plodding bass tom and tambourines round out the sound.
"The Bitter One" opens with impressive and mournful guitar picking reminiscent of a Bob Dylan country-folk ballad. Uplifting strings enters towards the end of the song – this is the section of the album where those not yet in tears will be.
"Cold Eyes" could have been left off the album - it breaks the continuity with electric and pedal steel/slide guitar and a more fleshed out drum kit. It's also the a weaker song than the others on The Way To Bitter Lake. This song does, however, set the listener up for the feedbacking, distorted guitar solo that closes the next track, "Maggie's Song For Alice" and for the closing track.
Feedback, lots of it, defines "End Song" – imagine Jimi Hendrix' "Star-Spangled Banner" crossed with a traditional folk-ballad, if you can.
A brilliantly produced and beautiful album by an exciting new voice in folk music, be it psyche or otherwise. Highly recommended album and probably a good live show too: judging from Spider's ID magazine fashion spread bio photo – a black and white of Spider reclining in short shorts, tight shirt and and hippy headband on the forest floor – she's easy on the eyes and, true to her moniker, all legs.
Unless Joanna Newsom drops another brilliant album this may well be the very finest folk that New Weird America has to offer this year.
