Freak folk is hard to describe. Skinny Bones don’t make that genre any easier to put into words, but they do make the listening process a hell of a lot more enjoyable. The electronic folk duo, comprised of sees singer-guitarist Jacob Rosati and percussionist Christopher Stoppiello, whips up songs the skitter with bright hooks, mainly through creating “unresolved tension” in every song. They use water bottles, toilet flushes, and bags of change in their work, toying with found sounds until they curate a sound entirely their own. It’s complex yet inviting; think Henry Cowell and Nicolas Jaar inviting Sufjan Stevens over for brunch.
Now that we’ve gobbled up “Wanderlust” and the rest of their debut album, Noise Floor, it’s time to take on a new single. Skinny Bones make that easy by serving up one hell of a breakfast to accompany it.
In their music video for “Sleep In” — a track which begins with the gentle pickings of an acoustic guitar that slowly opens up into the dark loopings of someone’s lucid dreaming — Skinny Bones wed darkroom tricks with common visuals to explore how chronology dictates temporal ties. Or, as they put it bluntly, it’s “Fragmented. Distorted. Repeated.” The video, edited by Peter Ferris Rosati, rearranges breakfast, flopping eggs and orange peels in a hectic, bright mess of anxiety, deepening the darkness of an already sinister song.
Skinny Bones and Zola Jesus play a FREE show this Friday at The Sinclair, courtesy of Converse Rubber Tracks, which, naturally, is already sold out. But word on the street is that an extra batch of 100 tickets will be released at noon tomorrow (Thursday) and available here, so don’t miss out.
