4.6 - To describe a work of art as "original" sets it on an impossibly teetering pedestal that can fall at the scoff of someone with deeper music knowledge. But to my ears, this record is an original. First, it captures and integrates so many seemingly disparate sounds - from sea shanties to troubadour ballads of the middle ages to Indian folk chanting... Second, there's an organic feel to this record, performed by not so much a band as an artistic collective, or a commune of misfits supporting some larger spiritual endeavor. The strange echos on "The Minotaur's Song" make me picture a large, rickety parlor room outfitted with a few tape recorders, where a group of music students has gathered to share joints and jugs of wine and sing in rough choral harmony. Most songs on this record don't simply unfold, they seem to sprout - twisting and gnarling and blooming in different, unexpected directions (see "A Very Cellular Song"). Third, the lyrics read like poetry with strange imagery, dredging up childhood memories, with the odd reference to transcendentalist philosophy. ("Setting your foot where the sand is untrodden, The ocean that only begins. Listen, a woman with a bulldozer built this house now. Carving away the mountain whose name is your childhood home.") It's a work of audacious ambition - by all rights it should never have been created: the recordings too unrehearsed, the lyrics too obscure, the singers and players not quite up to snuff. And there are definitely parts of the record where you can hear everything unravel ("Swift as the Wind"). But, taken together, the record glows with childlike wonder and a sense of vast creative possibility.