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Hieronymus Bogs – The Angel

With a name like Hieronymus Bogs, eclecticism is almost expected. The Rochester folk artist and group of musicians that embellish his craft—the appropriately-named Bogs Visionary Orchestra, or BVO—harbor few inhibitions and fully live up to their respective monikers. Bogs’ unique vein of rootsy outsider folk enmeshes poetry and performance, nearly evading traditional classification altogether. The end result is an art form equal parts unconventional and embraceable, a sonic tizzy of spoken-word poetry and folk-tinged orchestration. On his latest release, a nine-track collection of songs and poems titled The Angel (titled after a William Blake poem of the same name), Bogs (and company) keeps the instrumentation delicate and organic while his often interpretive lyrics remain soaked in folklore. The album’s title track introduces the main theme with a tenderly played piano backdrop, Bogs singing longingly over top—“I dreamt a dream, what could it mean?” The very opening line captures the album[...]