A magical mystery tour

Arborea

Arborea (Fire Museum)

ESSENTIAL "Echo of Hooves"

The second album from this northern Maine acid-folk duo floats like a daydream in and out of song and form. Ideas are tacked together with loose improvisations, ringing notes, and lush strums echoing as they drift through spare atmospheres. Words are sung when the mood allows, riffs and phrases played until they no longer amuse. But unlike most albums that double as aural wallpaper, we're sucked in, along for Arborea's ethereal ride through a psych-holler reshuffling of Appalachian and British folk music. On "Dark Is the Night (in the Wind)," a banjo kicks out a rhythm emulating the clop-clop of horses, while "Red Bird" tracks like the title song of a melancholy movie. Though Shanti Curran's violin and vocal hosannas are often more tone fragments than melodies, they have a synergy with Buck Curran's guitar and flute, leaping and sliding in concert with his plucked resonances and diving overtones. Arborea can be too precious; it's usually a warning sign when musicians list the details of their wholly ordinary-sounding "custom" instruments. But overall Arborea turns its pretenses into alluring mystery. [Tristram Lozaw]

Arborea plays at the Red Door in Portsmouth, N.H. (603-373-6827, reddoorportsmouth.com), next Monday.