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Glenn Jones
THIS IS THE WIND THAT BLOWS IT OUT
(Strange Attractors)
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When the tumbling arpeggios of an acoustic 12-string guitar are affecting enough to conjure visions of cool waterfalls and long walks along verdant country paths, there’s a kind of sensory magic at work. And this beautiful album, certainly one of the finest we’ll hear by a Boston-based artist this year, has a surplus of it. Whether Jones, guitarist and leader of Cul de Sac, is revisiting old-time mountain music for his inspiration in "One Jack Rose (That I Mean)" or picking and playing slide in the tradition of one of his sources of inspiration, John Fahey, in the title track, what’s constant on his solo acoustic debut is an abundance of rich tumbling melodies built from crisp, clean resonating notes. Jones’s sensibility, which embraces blues, jazz, classical, folk, and improvisation, finds moods and modes changing often, though he prefers a sort of slow evolution in each piece. Inspired by a memorial to a dead sculptor, "Sphinx unto Curious Men" moves from something akin to European classicism to the bold open notes and repetition of ambient music to a style that visits the Baroque era and then returns to more ambient exploration. It’s all done with a natural, unforced feel devoid of flash and etched in slow detail so every nuance of his vibrato and tone can be absorbed. Really, the right word is "felt," since these instrumental compositions all have genuine emotional resonance, no slight accomplishment.
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