Philadelphia spectral travelers
Bardo Pond had already gotten into some pretty heavy trips by the time their decidedly gentler sixth album,
Ticket Crystals, arrived in 2006. While still brimming with sludgy psychedelic guitar work and mountainous percussion, Isobel Sollenberger's flute playing becomes the unexpected focal point of many of these extended jams, and the delay-laden textures spilling out of it demand more space than, say, a ripping seven-minute guitar solo. The entire album is drenched in dubby reverb and delay, tucking its more menacing tones in layers of starlit musical wandering and resonating the most on subdued numbers like the sprawling "Isle" and a hazy reading of
the Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry." ~ Fred Thomas