Untitled Document
Of all the acoustic
guitarists to glom on to the great John Fahey, Glenn Jones might have the
most cred. He had the honor of actually collaborating with the late master,
on 1996’s The Epiphany of Glenn Jones, and could claim him as a longtime friend. Jones, the
leader of Cul de Sac, an instrumental avant-rock band from Boston, is no
Johnny-come-lately. For more than 30 years he has been a disciple of the
Takoma school, a tradition that emphasizes lyricism and exploration over
hott lixx and theory-driven wankery. He has also ventured far outside the
relatively cloistered acoustic-guitar scene, working with such disparate
figures as cult director Roger Corman and former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki.
In fact, Jones abstained from acoustica altogether for some 15 years,
preferring to focus on his electric work instead; it wasn’t until
2001, the year of Fahey’s death, that he opted to unplug again. Against Which the Sea Continually Beats, like Jones’s first solo release, 2004’s This Is the Wind That Blows It Out, boasts a sound that is as graceful, variegated, and assured
as its title is clumsy. A blend of Delta slide, country blues, British
folk, and Indian-derived classical forms played on both six- and 12-string
guitars, the album displays its creator’s impressive mastery of
fingerstyle technique, his almost supernatural deftness in coaxing from his
instrument a luxuriant array of melodies and textures. Jones favors open
tunings and hacksaw-modified capos, which yield tonalities and harmonics
that are at once familiar and strange. Throughout, compositional
considerations always trump technical chops, considerable though they may
be. Bookended by the languorous fragments “Island
1” and “Island 2” (the CD’s title was taken from an
antique map of Martha’s Vineyard, where Jones and his longtime
soundman/engineer Anthony Esposito recorded the album), the songs are
uniformly tranquil without being tedious. “David and the
Phoenix,” a dense, undulant vista of 12-string dazzle and drone,
undergoes a series of dynamic variations in eight-plus minutes, but its
transitions are so subtle, its movement so inexorable that listening to it
is like being carried along on a river of molten bronze. “Little
Dog’s Day,” an alternately merry and melancholy neotrad
standout, reveals the influences of folk-blues icons Etta Baker and
Elizabeth Cotton; the dreamy, often dissonant quasi-raga “The Teething
Necklace” is an homage to Fahey. Both the pinging, madcap
“Richard Nixon Orchid” and the Appalachian-inspired
“Against My Ruin” showcase Jones’s virtuosic slide work,
whereas the 12-string meditations “Cady” and “Freedom
Raga” nimbly incorporate a handful of idioms. Although he would never
presume to fill Fahey’s shoes, Jones proves himself a worthy
successor with this rich, fiercely idiosyncratic record. The sixth solo outing
from Kiwi indie-rock legend David Kilgour, The
Far Now finds the founder of the Clean in an
easygoing, reflective frame of mind. According to Kilgour, the new album
was originally intended to be his “lysergic guitar heavy
extravaganza”; instead, he hunkered down with his recently purchased
Gibson acoustic and let the songs dictate his approach. The result is a
mellow, mostly midtempo confection of burnished psych-pop and buzzing folk
rock, a studiously nostalgic collection of songs with a wide-eyed,
spontaneous feel. The intricately picked acoustic-guitar workout “The
Sun of God” and the lovely, laid-back “I Cut My Heart Out
Once” mesh surprisingly well with more ornate numbers, such as the
countrified “On Your Own,” which whips strings, piano, and
pedal-steel guitar into an incongruously pretty death march, and the
synth-washed, distortion-pocked “I’m Gonna Get Better
Lately,” which gets a lot of atmospheric mileage out of two
oft-repeated sentences. Low-key has seldom sounded so high-concept.
Contact René Spencer Saller at rssaller@core.com.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2007.
