FESTIVAL doubles as a band name and an invitation, a banner announcing spring's somnambulist revelries. As the group's high priestesses, Brooklyn-based sisters Alexis and Lindsay Powell share writing and singing roles; their voices twist in the air like two ritual flames, braiding into a great bonfire and then parting in tendrils of smoke; often the heavenly calls will undergo a mitosis and disperse into an avian chorus of prayers and incantations. The song "Valentine," available on FESTIVAL's MySpace page, even introduces the spirit of gospel (piano, handclaps, tambourine) into its equinoctial harmonies.   

Musically the band is just as diverse, if not more so, than its brethren at Greg and Jessica Weeks's Language of Stone. Granted, this judgment is based on the only three Festival songs available on the Net, but even in these the instrumentation and dynamics defy any natural order. The rapid changes in tone, melody, and percussion, as well the foregrounded harmonies, approximate the effect of fellow Brooklynite folk-psychers Grizzly Bear. In their more explosive moments, the Powell sisters recall the delirious glam-folk of label-mate Ex Reverie.  

It's an exciting thing to witness the germination of a small label (even if it be an imprint of Drag City), to mark the Weeks's aesthetic choices and watch the collective foliation of a new musical garden. FESTIVAL's Come, Arrow, Come!, prophesied to drop this spring, will be the fifth album to be released by Language of Stone and the first not to be recorded and produced by Greg Weeks in his Hexham Head Studio (the record was cut in Nashville).  

Stay tuned for more Language of Stone acts in the near future: as the planet's ecosystems grow warmer, more and more creatures of the earth are forced from the ground to set things aright, sing-along style.     

http://www.myspace.com/linzyandlexi

"Boxcar"