Transcendental and atmospheric acousto-folk.

 

It’s always intriguing to find a song tagged with ‘seance’ on Soundcloud. But Baby Blue, the latest single by Wolf Prize, deserves that tag unlike any other track. Hauntingly gentle and beautifully ethereal, the track is so tinged with bittersweet melancholy that it feels just like a seance.

The overarching sound of the single is that of folk, which if you’re anything like me should send a shiver straight down your spine. It’s become such a stagnant and stale genre that it takes something especially interesting to capture my attention. That’s just what Wolf Prize do here, laying on masses of echo and ambience to make this anything but another throwaway folk track. This is ethereal folk; haunting and beautiful from the first syllable to the fade of the sustained notes, with unrivalled atmosphere.

More than that, this feels like the band performing a seance to the departed spirit of folk music. A genre, done to death, can at last be buried: with a soundscape like this, you’ll never need acoustic folk again.