(Lazy Susan Records, digital)
Mystic sigils flash on-screen during the grainy music video for northern Vermont alt-folk outfit Sheepskin’s song “Devil Owns My Eyes.” Superimposed between fleeting shots of band members Sam Tiesworth, Molly Meehan, Derrick Burt and Finn Lester-Niles, the inscrutable lettering lends the song an occult sensibility.
Despite the demonic title, there’s no outward menace. Quite the opposite, actually. The nascent band’s gingerly plucked, sweetly murmured song is homey and contemplative. The witchy motif adds a mysterious edge to the approachable sound.
Celebrating their recently released debut album, Pirate Ship Playground, Sheepskin just concluded a northeast tour of the U.S. and Canada. Tiesworth, the band’s guitarist, formerly led Queen City jangly alt-country project No Fun Haus, which is currently on hiatus. Meehan, the group’s pianist, makes inquisitive indie rock under the moniker Vega. (Her debut, trust me, i’m trying, dropped in early summer.)
As the band’s core songwriters, Tiesworth and Meehan each bring to Sheepskin glimpses of what they’ve created elsewhere. Tiesworth explained via email that the band creates “a delicate and sincere combination of folk, jazz, spooky-country, and gentle slacker rock.”
Most of the album presents as prime Vermont tuneage. Clean and concise, the songs feature small towns, forest clearings, rolling pastures and cold weather. Unhurried tempos and hazy harmonies keep their sound rooted in mountain folk traditions.
But some of Sheepskin’s songs fray at the edges, revealing something darker and dirtier lurking beneath the sheen. The guitar on “River Song” crackles and splits over the thrum of Lester-Niles’ upright bass, instilling the song with a ragged, lived-in quality. A wavering organ introduces “Saint Catherine,” its tones almost imperceptibly dipping in and out of coherence. The same quality of uncertainty spills over into a psychedelic backdrop of guitar.
Similarly, a sense of surreality permeates the group’s visuals. The lo-fi video for “Devil Owns My Eyes” strains the senses. Pirate Ship Playground’s album cover shows the band perching riverside next to sheep that seem to bleed in from another dimension. And the band’s website includes a couple of swirling, acid-trip nature GIFs.
Pirate Ship Playground is a lovely listen, but the weirdness brewing under its palatable surface is Sheepskin’s most tantalizing quality. It makes you wonder where the up-and-comers might take things if they threw caution to the wind and leaned into their riskier tendencies.
Pirate Ship Playground is available on all major streaming services.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.
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