I think The Milk-Eyed Mender is a much better cd by Joanna Newsom. I've listened to Ys a good 3 or 4 times and it hasn't really sunk in. Maybe if I give it a few more I'll start to catch on, but for first time Newsom listeners, I highly suggest The Milk-Eyed Mender over Ys, Imo.

No way, Ys is incredible, The Milk-Eyed Mender is very good but pales in comparison. I'm pretty sure she's not acid folk anyways.

I like Psych-Folk a lot, but I'm much more of a fan of the early purveyors such as Holy Modal Rounders, Vashti Bunyan, The Fugs, the Godz, Spyrogira, Trees, Fuschia etc. Some of that stuff is seriously strange.

Psych-Folk is a pretty sweet genre. One of my favorite Psych-Folk bands out at the moment are the Espers. Anyone listen to them?

Yes! I really enjoy Espers. Their song "Black Is the Color" is a current addiction of mine, actually! A couple freak-folk / psych-folk / etc. that I've been enjoying as of late:

CocoRosie


Metallic Falcons


Xiu Xiu


Beirut

pysch-folk and freak folk are basically the same thing (well sorta) except freak-folk has a wider array of possibilities, pych-folk has more of a general feel to it, trying to make folk music more psychedelic, while freak folk is just a term meaning "experimental folk".

but again to most people they're pretty much the same

these genres are generally classified as the off-folk genres: Freak Folk, Psych Folk, Neofolk, Anti-folk, and Folktronica

Thanks for opening up a sub-genre that I didn`t know existed!
My candidate for inclusion here would be John Martyn, who died in 2009 after a lifetime of music making.
IMO, he got the recipe just right on his 1973 album, Solid Air; with just a handful of simple ingredients he cooks up an album of great charm. Using deliberately slurred vocals and electrically modifying his accoustic guitar, he created a light, spooky sound that no other singer/songwriter imagined at the time, and yet the songs in themselves retain the simplicity of his early folk roots.

" Won`t be fancy, but I will be free.
You know I love ya,
You can really talk to me
And we can go down easy."
-JM, Go Down Easy

PS I really liked the Cocorosie clip !

Beirut, Devendra Banhart. Very nice.
Never knew this was 'psych folk'.
I've always hated coco rosie though, but they seem do be doing something right.
I get really agressive by listening to it, so I won't ;).

Need more love:

I don't really nitpick over genre names, but I love Joanna Newsom. Ys is still one of the most strangely wonderful albums I've ever heard. Psych-folk? Ok.