I sometimes find the diversity of my own musical tastes a bit bizarre. Just as apt to toss a classic jazz album like Kind of Blue onto the record player, I too have no qualms listening to the loudest of garage rock then switching over to something a bit folky. Especially if it’s fringe folk; artists that pack their folk-pop with instruments, take on an old-timey sound, or even head down an art-folk, freak folk, or experimental folk path.

Capybara finds themselves among the latter in that realm o’ folk. And I can’t help but become entirely intrigued by the sounds they create.

This is not the first time we have covered Capybara. We wrote about their LP, Try Brother, way back at the tail end of 2009. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.

Back then, it was the diversification of the band’s songs that drew me in; the inclusion of chamber pop and free jazz into songs was too much to resist.

It is no surprise that this is precisely what draws me in yet again. Capybara is back with a new album called Dave Drusky and it clashes folk with other genres in quite the same way that Try Brother did three years ago.

But what astounds me here is that the songs seem a bit more cohesive. The band has found its unique place in the realm of music and it sounds very good. “Late Night Bikes” and “Neighbor Crimes” have great sounds that will undoubtedly peak your interest.

Check both songs out below and keep an eye out for Dave Drusky. The album hits February 7 via The Record Machine (the same label that brought us Cowboy Indian Bear).

Download: “Neighbor Crimes” by Capybara

Download: “Late Night Bikes” by Capybara

As odd as it may sound, the music created by Cowboy Indian Bear fits perfectly with the band’s name. Somewhere in the pallid obscurity of a peyote high, out in rustic Deliverance-land in middle America, their music is the loop-filled psychedelic daydream you have during a bout of insomnia at 3am. Luscious harmonies and a driving percussion backed by a hint of rock-meets-pop efficacy, “Saline” generates a power familiar to the Lawrence, Kansas area — a land known for producing great independent artists.

“Saline” opens with harmonies that keep the listener in a trance-like haze until the midpoint, when guitars and drums enter with precision and clarity. The entire video takes place in a fairground and the perspective fits the loops with which the band populates their songs — there is lots of spinning. And within it all is Cowboy Indian Bear’s mastery of time and rhythm and harmony.

“Saline” is off the band’s new LP, Each Other All The Time.

Download: “Saline” by Cowboy Indian Bear

Like any genre, folk has artists that are true to the origins of its particular style of music. And, like any genre, it has artists that push the boundaries. Capybara is of the latter classification. Try Brother sees the group expanding into new arenas, mashing pop and freak-folk, and sure, let’s throw in a splash of psychedelic as well. That being said, Capybara’s relation to folk is one that can be listed as partial – it is and it isn’t. It is the root, but there’s much more behind Try Brother to limit it to merely folk.

“Hello City Glow”, for example, is barely folk; the sensibilities of the genre have practically disappeared, though they were quite present in preceding tracks “San Francisco, 1906″ and “The Wimp”. Albeit, when the genre’s traits do appear, they’re a version as distorted as the offspring of a Chernobyl victim. But not as helpless – as if the offspring was, say, the next block in human evolution. The same can be said for “Cutaway Kid”. Yeah, this isn’t your cut-and-shoot traditional folk album by any means. And that’s the first telling that limiting the classification to folk really doesn’t cut it.

Along with the aforementioned genres, there are light traces of free jazz in songs like “Soft” and “Happiness / Let Child Roam” and chamber pop flirts with several songs, but above all there’s the avant-garde that labels all these tracks with the favorable ‘freak’ title. Were that a standalone genre it would work, but even paired with the inevitable ‘folk’ there’s still something not quite right. The influences are too wide and too plentiful.

As the instrumentation grows to include trumpets and banjos, and as the band expands into falsetto-meets-baritone vocal harmonies, and as synth lines weave intricate melodies completely unique in the realm of folk, Try Brother becomes something else entirely – a conceptual album of experimental music with folk leanings that is truly par none.

Capybara: Soft [mp3]

Capybara: The Wimp [mp3]

The Record Machine [CD, 2009]

1. San Francisco, 1906
2. The Wimp
3. Hello City Glow
4. Cutaway Kid
5. Soft
6. Happiness / Let Child Roam
7. Magpies
8. Dynamite Dare
9. Birthday Song For Bridgegirl
10. Waves In The Wire