Loren Connors and David Grubbs’ third collaborative record together is also the first on which they both play guitar, which is both surprising and not, given how it’s the principal instrument of both but that neither of them are particularly regarded for taking the obvious route. In which case, Somewhere In the Wind doesn’t so much seem to play to type, but will nonetheless be hugely satisfying for anyone who has taken an interest in their respective playing over the past, I don’t know, 40 or so years. There’s a range of nomenclature that loosely fits the space in which the pair operate - avant blues, post-blues, post-rock, all of which gesture towards some abstraction, innovation or obfuscation of the norm, which is probably as good a way as any to describe to the uninitiated what Loren Connors and David Grubbs have spent a lifetime doing, either singularly or in (comm)union with others. More specifically, these two long form pieces reflect a kind of haunted American Primitivism, spectral guitar figures evocative of that eternal ghost highway that seems to run a thread through the last century of North American music. For all their experimentation, I suppose you can then also argue that Somewhere In the Wind works in its pursuit of a tradition, whichever paths it chooses to deviate off down in order to get there. What else should we expect from such well versed innovators?
FFO: Roy Montgomery, Ry Cooder, Alan Licht, Robbie Basho
