Spooky Folk

The joke about Spooky Folk is that the band’s not exactly spooky—and that its music isn’t exactly folk, either. And while that remains true enough to a degree on Spooky Folk’s self-titled, full-length debut, it’s easy to understand how people so often mistake the band for a folk outfit: Frontman Kaleo Kaualoku’s vocals have a tender, affecting quality that few in the non-folk realm ever attain, and the instruments that garnish his band’s standard rock setup—organ, violin, cello, ukulele, banjo, trumpet, piano and even a washboard—don’t make the issue any less confusing. Neither does the fact that Spooky Folk’s songs all appear structured around Kaualoku’s words and acoustic guitar playing. Same goes for the incessant sing-along quality that so many of his songs provide (see “Bible Belt,” the album’s hook-filled highlight).

Despite all this, Spooky Folk’s sound bears too much of a college- and baroque-rock sheen to simply refer to it as folk-rock. The reverb-drenched guitars on “Polaroid” seem almost arena-ready, and the bounce that drives “Stars,” one of the album’s dancier tracks, is classically rock-derived.

In the end, Spooky Folk may not fully be a folk disc, but it still boasts all the qualities that make that genre so attractive in the first place: smart lyrics, memorable arrangements and timeless appeal. At its worst, the disc suffers slightly because even the band seems a little confused about its classification (the accordion-driven “Resurrect!” finds the band going for a gypsy-inspired sound). But at its best the disc proves one of the year’s best debuts.