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Vetiver
Biography
Vetiver are commonly lumped into the nascent "freak folk" movement alongside the likes of Joanna Newsom and Six Organs of Admittance, thanks to leader Andy Cabic's friendship with scene founder Devendra Banhart. (Besides Banhart's musical contributions to Vetiver's first two albums, Cabic co-wrote Banhart's breakout song "At the Hop," from 2004's Rejoicing in the Hands; on the same album, Banhart paid tribute to his friend's band in the song "When the Sun Shone on Vetiver.") However, the band's roots go deeper than Syd Barrett and Linda Perhacs, encompassing the U.K. shoegazer scene and the mid-'90s D.I.Y. indie rock scene. Cabic was part of the latter, forming the Raymond Brake in his native Greensboro, North Carolina in the early '90s. The Raymond Brake's noisy, Sonic Youth-influenced take on indie rock was a natural fit with both the Chapel Hill art-punk scene and the influential Washington D.C. indie Simple Machines, which released the band's debut album Piles of Dirty Winters in 1995. After a handful of EPs and one more album, 1996's Never Work Ever, the Raymond Brake broke up and Cabic migrated westward, eventually settling in San Francisco.
Selected Discography