One of the less remarked upon facets in music’s resurfacing of the past is the unlikely crossover in tastes between a certain kind of folk-loving indie musician and the sort of denim-leather-and-sideburns chap who believes every cross should be inverted and each amp turned to 11. The Decemberists have ventured into doomy, clanging metallic themes; Wand alternate between gentle pastoralism and Sabbatheseque riffing. The English quartet Wolf People are the most obvious combination of that duality – tracks such as Ninth Night or Night Witch have more in common with Saint Vitus than Fairport Convention, but where doom metal obsesses over the occult, Wolf People prefer historical esoterica (Ninth Night is based on an 18th-century thieves’ incantation). If Fairport Convention had preferred Black Sabbath to Bob Dylan, they might have sounded like this.
