Hit List

Kris Delmhorst, Songs for a Hurricane.

With her third release, the Cambridge, Massachusetts—based folk-popster leaves no doubt that she belongs among the indie singer-songwriter elite. She sequenced the album's 13 tracks to trace emotional turbulence along the arc of a hurricane, from eerie calm through tension, release, destruction, and rebirth. In the process Delmhorst and coproducer Billy Conway of Morphine create a highly engaging aural swirl of Sarah McLachlan-esque, midtempo velvet crunch ("Waiting for the Waves," "Hurricane"), rambunctious roots rock ("East of the Mountains," "Short Work"), sing-along alt-country ("Bobby Lee," "Wasted Word"), and intimate acoustic balladry ("You're No Train," "Juice and June," "Mingalay"). And it shouldn't go unnoted that Delmhorst, a nuanced, commanding vocalist who also plays guitar, fiddle, cello, organ, and mandolin, sings up a storm. (Signature Sounds, www.signaturesounds.com)

—Mike Thomas

Dylan Fowler, Ffynnon Ofor.

Dylan Fowler serves up his second solo album for Acoustic Music Records with Ffynnon Ofor. Playing fingerstyle on a Selmer/Maccaferri-style guitar, Fowler achieves a tonal quality that's at once delicate and punchy. The CD's 11 tunes are rooted in the styles of such British Isles guitar masters as John Renbourn and Davey Graham, but they also show that Fowler must have spent considerable time listening to Pierre Bensusan. The album's ensemble tunes feature engaging arrangements and find multi-instrumentalist Fowler overdubbing most of the parts (including clarinet, percussion, and additional guitars) himself. Besides shining with strong original material, Ffynnon Ofor also offers ambitious covers of Keith Jarrett's "My Song" and Peter Green's "Albatross." (Acoustic Music, www.acoustic-music.de)

—Teja Gerken

Alexis Harte, Sunlight Loping.

Northern California singer-songwriter Harte could pass as a Scottish or English expatriate on this second self-produced CD, as he channels bits of Donovan ("Sweet Tooth"), Nick Drake ("Lap Dragons"), and Al Stewart ("Puddle of Stars") along with a little gratuitous Tom Waits vocal processing. But his knack for catchy melodies, fresh lyrics, and deftly textured arrangements (integrating balafon, accordion, violin, and reeds into the mix), as well as crisp acoustic fingerpicking and taut soloing, confirm the original folk-rock sensibility he's forged since trading his Marshall amp head for an early-'60s sunburst Gibson acoustic guitar. A former ecologist in Brazil, Harte tempers his folkie romanticism with worldly rhythms and prismatic poetry for a bracing effect overall. (Mentl, www.mentlmusic.com)

—Derk Richardson

Shooglenifty, The Arms Dealer's Daughter.

Mixing guitar, banjo, mandolin, and string bass with trap drums, programming, and percussion samples, Scotland's six-man Shooglenifty continue to refine their Celtic/world hybrid. This second U.S. release features less scratching and fewer distortion pedals than did their first, but it's still a heady combination of jigs, reels, and polkas peppered with Arabic, Latin, and especially African influences. There's soukous, rumba, and chimurenga, smartly distilled and folded into neotrad Scots instrumentals. The tunes are wildly propulsive one minute and delicately meditative the next, but always richly satisfying, played with grace, taste, and a liberating boundlessness. (Compass, www.compassrecords.com)

—Kenny Berkowitz

 

The Double String Duo, Music of the Renaissance/Music of Today.

Jason Kessler's 12-string guitar and Rick Eckberg's five-string double bass combine to create a massive, cathedral-sized sound on tunes that range in style from Renaissance music to modern jazz, with a half-dozen pieces by J.S. Bach thrown in for good measure. The instruments' dark, powerful timbre is particularly effective on a Renaissance piece like John Dowland's "My Lord Wilobe's Welcome Home," featuring Kessler's fine period-appropriate improvisation. The duo also makes good use of the 17 strings they share between them on an imaginative arrangement of Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" and an interesting uptempo version of Davey Graham's "Angie." (12th Street, www.12streetmusic.com)

—Ron Forbes-Roberts

Soïg Sibéril, Gitar.

The fiddle and bombarde figure prominently in the traditional music of Brittany, but Soïg Sibéril has made the guitar a true Breton instrument, striding into new territories that even Dan Ar Braz hasn't thoroughly explored. A touring veteran with a long and varied discography, Sibéril shapes his own compositions and arrangements by drawing from and building upon Irish, Breton, and French traditions, which he combines into an original repertoire with equal love and confidence. His mostly fingerstyle playing is atmospheric, yet intimate, with a studio sound often reminiscent of Pierre Bensusan's best work. With a feather-light touch he delivers lightning runs of hammer-ons and pull-offs, sweetly ornamenting and solidly driving the dance tunes that were designed for very different instruments. Sibéril's own compositions, too, retain an ancient, mossy feel, suffused with both history and an appealing melancholy. (Coop Breizh, coopbreizh@wanadoo.fr)

—Danny Carnahan

Scott Miller and the Commonwealth, Upside Downside.

Swinging between electric roots rock and acoustic folk, Virginia's Scott Miller keeps getting better, rocking harder and growing wiser. On Upside Downside the former leader of the V-Roys juggles both aspects of his muse, from the straight-ahead rock 'n' roll of "It Didn't Take Too Long" to the quietly confessional "The Way," about a late-night, drunken search for home. In all of his performances, Miller keeps his guitar solidly understated, his voice honest, simple, and impassioned. And on the album's best tracks, Tim O'Brien adds a series of searing mandolin solos that lift these sides to greatness. (Sugar Hill, www.sugarhillrecords.com)

—Kenny Berkowitz

Buddy Guy, Blues Singer.

Why, one might ask, would Buddy Guy silence the frenetic, emotion-laden electric guitar that has been the backbone of his blues legend for half a century? The answer is to reconnect with the Mississippi roots of Chicago blues. On the aptly titled Blues Singer, Guy's deeply soulful voice takes center stage, backed by his acoustic picking, as he inhabits the rural blues of Skip James, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Shines, and others. Some cuts, like Hooker's "Sally Mae," are completely stripped down—just Guy and his guitar, which still packs a punch without the benefit of amplification. Others, like Willie Dixon's "I Love the Life I Live," feature a small band. Of special interest is a second Hooker classic, "Crawlin' Kingsnake," which includes a cameo by Eric Clapton and a rare acoustic guitar solo by another electric blues legend, B.B. King. (Silvertone/BMG, www.bmg.com)

—Ian Zack

Mad Agnes, Magic Hour.

When is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? When you combine the outstanding talents of veteran musicians Margo Hennebach, Adrienne Jones, and Mark Saunders in a new trio, Mad Agnes. With ethereal three-part harmonies, quirky lyrics, and superb guitar work, Magic Hour is a beguiling brew of Celtic and medieval-flavored folk, with lyrics that dispense old- as well as new-age wisdom. While Hennebach and Jones share lead vocals and writing credits, Saunders provides understated ballast with his voice and lead guitar—his delicate arpeggio picking on the cover of Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day" and fiery fills and runs on "Dancing Man" and "Uninvited Guest/Morrison's Jig" are especially noteworthy. It all adds up to a flawless CD with a unique sound. (Mad Agnes, www.madagnes.com)

—CŽline Keating

Richard Walz, Doug Back, Andrew Zohn, The Big Trio Reprise.

When most people think of the music you might play in a banjo/mandolin/guitar trio, opera is probably the last genre that springs to mind. But on The Big Trio Reprise banjoist Doug Back, mandolinist Richard Walz, and guitarist Andrew Zohn play charming instrumental versions of operatic arias, overtures, and choruses, along with a handful of light-classical pieces. Back, Walz, and Zohn have taken inspiration, and some of the arrangements, from the Big Trio, a sort of supergroup made up of guitarist William Foden, mandolinist Giuseppe Pettine, and banjoist Fredrick Bacon, widely hailed as three of the finest string instrumentalists around the turn of the last century. The modern recreations of Foden's arrangements of the finale from the overture to Rossini's William Tell (the Lone Ranger theme to most of us) and "The Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen are impeccably played, good fun, and offer a fascinating glimpse into a nearly forgotten piece of guitar culture. (Belmando, www.belmando.com)

—Michael Simmons

Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally, Brothers at Heart.

Flatpicking aficionados should find themselves thoroughly engaged by this tribute to the classic brother-duet style of acoustic country music. The material spans the traditional and newly composed and the singing is warm and inviting, but it's the guitar playing that's most intriguing. Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally are fine pickers whose approaches are very different yet complementary. Nunally is an amazingly economical player, coaxing every bit of music out of a fingerboard position, while Bruce's approach is more diatonic and melody-driven. This combination of contrasts makes Brothers at Heart a fascinating lesson in diverse ways of interpreting a song on the guitar. (FGM, www.fgmrecords.com)

—Sue Thompson

Ricardo Cobo, Guitar Lullaby.

Exposure to this program of nontraditional lullabies is likely to dispatch even the most restless child quickly and gently into slumberland, which is exactly what Colombian guitarist Ricardo Cobo and producer Keith Pearcy intended when they put together this CD. Older folks, however, may find themselves resisting the sandman in order to stay awake and hear all 17 of these beautiful guitar instrumentals by such guitarist/ composers as Sérgio Assad, Paulo Bellinati, Leo Brouwer, and Andrew York. Cobo imbues these pieces with his usual warm, rich tone and lyrical phrasing, and while the nature of the material calls for a certain amount of restraint, he plays these pieces with great expression and flair. (Ellipsis, www.ellipsisarts.com)

—Ron Forbes-Roberts

Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, December 2003, No. 132.

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