Into the woods
Psych-folksters Whysp tap into Forest magic.
By Max Goldberg

LOOKING AT THE bill on my way to the Great American Music Hall record release show for Deerhoof's The Runners Four last month, the band names conjured up a nerdy Dungeons and Dragons dreamscape of mythical beings: Hoof-ed creatures, Octises, and Whysps all doing battle with the roll of my many-sided die. When I got to the venue, the area in front of the stage was jammed with young, cute 'Hoof devotees when a mass of musicians and instruments spilled out onto the stage, arranging themselves in be-in figuration. A polite hello sent the crew careening into a short set of forest folk, as much imbued with the usual psychedelic shades of Syd Barrett and Incredible String Band as it was blessed with unexpected flourishes – harmony vocals that channeled some of the Mamas and the Papas' considerable powers. The stage was split evenly between men and women, some dressed in plain T-shirts and jeans, while others reveled in the throwback climate: Singer-guitarist-bell-player Jeff Manson cut a particularly hippie-dippy figure, draped with some sort of blanket-rug number as he dreamily bobbed his head to the tom drum's thump.

A few of Deerhoof's children looked a little confounded by the magicmakers known as Whysp, but more often than not I spied heads nodding and eyes glazed with intrigue. By the time the Santa Cruz-Bay Area collective said goodbye, bound for a short West Coast tour with San Francisco folk duo the Finches, the vibe had been delivered in full.

Given that Whysp looks more like a full-blown community onstage than your traditional rock band, their origin is surprisingly easy to pinpoint. Cofounder Josh Alper cites Santa Cruz's branch of Streetlight Records as ground zero. A veteran of the Santa Cruz noise scene most known for his work with the Lowdown (a raucous trio shared with Hugh Holden and Noel Harmonson, Comets on Fire's Echoplex whiz), Alper found himself transfixed by the pagan cover art and John Peel liner notes on an LP by the '60s English psych-folk group Forest in the store's used record bin. "I bought it and came home to put it on, and it was just like, 'Wow, I've been waiting my whole life to hear this,' " Alper recounted over the phone from Santa Cruz. "Those voices ringing out, and the songs are so dynamic. There's something really human about it too, like they're not trying to put on any guises."

Sufficiently impressed, Alper shared his discovery with brothers-in-arms Holden and Manson. When Black Elk Speaks, a friend's band and a USAISAMONSTER side project came to town shortly thereafter, the trio thought a Forest-esque group would fill out the bill perfectly, and thus Whysp was born. Some might smell a bowing to trends in the move from the Lowdown's noise to Whysp's acoustic alchemy, but it's hard to stay cynical when you hear Alper's excitable voice pick up steam as he explains this new musical refraction. Moreover, he's convincing when he discusses the continuity of these musical projects: a sustained emphasis on cacophonous performance and challenging songwriting. "We were already interested in a style of songwriting ... that involved problematizing the standard rock format," he said.

Yes/no microphones?

While Forest's wooden, harmony-laced psychedelia remains a pillar of Whysp's sound, such origin myths only go so far when it comes to understanding a band that is wholly democratic. "Whysp never feels like something you have to have a membership to," Manson explained to me on the phone as he navigated SF's mazy streets. "No one claims ownership over the thing." Although Josh, Jeff, and Hugh do still mostly split the lead vocals à la John, Paul, and George, a backbone of collaborative energy exists that makes Whysp more than the sum of its parts. There's always someone to lead the group into a song with a few strums of the guitar, but the tune inevitably ends in a group effort: chords crashing up against one another, feet stomping, voices ringing out loud and true.

As it turns out, part of the concept of this very live sound ("We sound better with no microphones," Manson said) can be traced back to a recording session a couple of years ago. Alper described the band's week recording with Phil Elverum at the Microphones/Mt. Eerie guru's Washington home in reverent terms: "We start hiking up the side of this mountain. He had a half-inch 8-track up in this octagonal cabin with just one mic.... He had this idea of how we were going to do it that involved layering a lot of vocals, and it changed the band, honestly. The minute he played back the first thing we had been working on, it was like, 'Whoa, we actually have presence!' "

Indeed, the Elverum recordings – released as a self-titled album on Yik Yak in 2004 – are fantastically rich and refreshingly organic. With their gentle, jingling feast of instrumentation and voices, songs like "Seedling" and "The Changeling" are intimate epics, homespun and grand.

Connecting with Forest

Like many of the psych-folk village, Whysp remains humble and appropriately awed by their predecessors. Besides opening for a reformed Incredible String Band in 2004, the band has reached back to its source in the last year and sought out and found Dez Allenby and Martin Welham, two-thirds of their beloved Forest (through "the magic of the Internet," Alper explained.) Alper in particular has connected with these Englishmen for the people they are: Upon getting to know them on a beyond-the-record level, his admiration only seems to have deepened. It isn't difficult to imagine his delight in learning that Welham had new songs to share: "Martin and his son were playing some music, and it was very magical to me that they were still tapped into that spirit of Forest.... It was like meeting a relative: a lot of give and take. All these artists offer an amazing opportunity, and it's given Whysp a nice grounding in that era."

The rediscovery resulted in this year's The Dawn Is Crowned (Good Village), a 12-inch split with a few new Whysp space oddities and recordings by Welham and his son Tom. So many deserving, original psych-folk records have been excavated with the music's resurgence in the last couple of years (kudos to Devendra), but one can't help but feel that this one represents a particular labor of love. "We're not these totally polished, beatific creatures," Alper remarked. "We're just people here making music. We are thoroughly accessible in that way ... and I believe in that."

Whysp play the opening-night party for "New Work by Cornelia Parker" and "Recent Work by Wang Du," Fri/18, 8 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. $15. (415) 978-2787.