Barn Nova

Barn Nova does have songs with lyrics, but the atmosphere is so off-the-cuff that it wouldn't be hard to convince you that this admixture of space rock and rustic country-folk-influenced sounds was put together more or less on the fly. Guitar lines, sometimes intertwining, can sear fuzzily, noodle, or shimmer with a liquid grace, or even approximate a serene country-rock glide. The words, more often than not, are indistinctly enunciated or mixed, so they sometimes act more as sounds that help establish the mood than they are phrases that make a statement. Occasionally it veers near stoned Neil Young territory, but Young never quite gets this unfocused or as slanted toward zonked-out riffs. If you had to have a band rehearsing somewhere near your property, this wouldn't be the worst one to settle for, as they have a friendlier, more low-key vibe than many groups with similar predilections. Yet the meandering sprawl might leave the impression that these are the kind of musicians whose talents might be best used in groups with better, more disciplined composers, rather than within a conglomerate of like-minded souls generating their own material.