The sounds of the instruments are scattered like ambient sounds on Blanket Warm (Bar/None, 1996), turning each song into an impressionistic painting. It takes three minutes of delicate counterpoint among guitar, mandolin and violin before a majestic crescendo propelled by contrabass and trombone lets the vocals in for the few closing seconds of Good Morning. The surreal serenade of Queen Of The Long-Legged Insects is composed by juxtaposing a Rolling Stones-ian shouting blues, bluegrass finger-picking and a droning accordion (a` la John Cale's viola in the Velvet Underground). The Drama Of Your Life and Eskimo Song Due exhibit the graceful posture of a renaissance madrigal.
The album barely scratches the surface of the ensemble's capabilities, as they constrain themselves to the format of the country ballad and to the domain of earthly events. The rhythms and the arrangements are completely off-key, though, as in the frantically syncopated Honey Drop The Knife, or the Band-esque Boar's Nest (folk-rock meets gospel music), or the passionate hymn of Three Peas In A Pod (a rowdy shuffle that borrows the refrain from Eric Burdon's San Franciscan Nights), or the bluesy dirge of February North 24th St (halfway between Broadway show tunes and New Orleans funeral bands). Here and there one can hear a philosophy that transcends cowboy music, although it is still inspired by the cowboy's daily endeavours: Spreading The Evening Sky With Cows is a prayer that reconciles the human and the divine within the sphere of nature. The album ends on a domestic and pastoral note with Good Night, ten minutes of cricket noises, Christmas bells, gospel organ, and, again, crickets. The album is a sober, intense, realistic fresco of ordinary (and non-ordinary) life that sort of summarizes the civilization of the American Mid-west.

Their "chamber folk" was further refined on I Never Even Asked For Light (Bar/None, 1997). The sound of this album is sleepy and abstract, often hypnotic, as it lulls the elusive melody in a sea of warm tones. An orchestra of guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, kalimba, dulcimer, trumpet, trombone, clarinet and percussions transforms each song into an intense sonic experience.
The structure is often free-form. The melody of Irish Wake follows countless detours, while mandolins are plucked like harpsichords and violins float like kites. Ditto for In Honor Of My Stumbling: instruments and melody follow lines that are not well-drawn, focusing on the content rather than on the form.
This is not to say that emotion has no part of it. On the contrary, tender emotions surface from Jester's Siren (with echoes of Leonard Cohen and early Neil Young) and particularly This Is As Close As We Get, possibly the most personal song on the album.
Furthermore, the Lullaby displays a bolder rhythmic emphasis that, united to the "open" format, propels energetic and jagged numbers such as Hypnotist, The Sunset & The Electric Bill and Descent.
This time the album, that opened with chirping birds and a nostalgic melody (1), ends with The Man Vs The Tide, a three-part suite whose first movement, led by cello and clarinet, is a baroque adagio, and whose third movement, recorded on the beach with seagulls and waves in the background, is an old-fashioned folk ballad.
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks finally found an heir.

Following the philosophical single The Ebb & Flow The Come & Go The To & Fro", the album Song (Bar/None, 1999) further reduced the pace, plunging in a serene slumber. Tickled by accordion, trombone, vibraphone, flugelhorn, clarinet and so on, the music drifts rather than erupt. Expand Contract is a ghostly ode ("Can you tell me what is real?"), reminiscent of Japanese folk and of baroque concerts, that introduces the album's crowd of disoriented humans. Inherent Song transpires acid-rock's languid/ecstatic posture. Trombone and a lazy pace lend Asleep on the Subway a bluesy, cocktail-lounge feeling.
The journey takes on religious and mythical overtones with the eight-minute meditation Seizures, wedding a solemn crooning with suave cello and slide lines. The short Non Serviam sounds like a church anthem, thanks to funereal organ and a hushed litany.
The mini-odyssey of Sketchings on a Bar Room Napkin recovers some emotional ground and Kitchen Song and Still Life ground Stevens's poetry back in a surreal view of daily life on this planet (with profusion of strings).
These are more than folk ballads, these are concept pieces of a subtle complexity.

With Rachel's and Dirty Three, Lullaby are bringing the classical music sensibility to the alternative-rock scene.

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