Some of my best friends are hippies.

I thought there were laws against such blatant genetic cloning.

You always need to be wary when press releases use phrases like "choral psychedelic folk rock" to describe music. Read: hippie. Read: post-Animal Collective, post-Silver Mt Zion Orchestra, post-Devandra Banhart, post-whatever the bloody flavour of the year happens to be (which happens to be the lamentable averageness of Bon Iver, nice chap n' all). Now, I'm actually quite fond of Devandra. I think he has enough of a character and charisma and way round a wayward tune and self-deprecating lyric and casual arrogance to be able to get away with plenty of what I would never have tolerated in... I don't know... a Jeff Buckley. But. I don't need nine bloody little clones of his, gathering together near The Burning Man (or wherever it is they hold those corporate hippie bun-fest that the Google founders go to in the desert), making like outtakes from a Kris Kristofferson movie, wassailing like a Christian indie rock band (sorry, 'collective') who've just discovered their first Sister Rosetta Tharpe album, travelling round in a converted school bus, covertly auditioning for the title music in the follow-up to Where The Wild Things Are, releasing an album on my beloved Rough Trade Records.

I have absolutely nothing against Christian music, or hippies, or the Merry Pranksters (although I can't imagine I would've been down with their prodigious reliance upon drugs for life experience), or indeed Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros (who are the band responsible for this whole sorry mess)... I just wish that record companies occasionally didn't follow the zeitgeist.