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Alan Sparhawk, "Solo Guitar"
This isn't the first extra-curricular activity from Low's main singer/songwriter to surface, however, those who are looking for something like "Sleep Song," or Hospital Children or Black Eyed Snakes type recordings are in for a surprise. The title of Solo Guitar should be a hint, as this recording is more for the fans of the uneasy listening of Loren Mazzacane Connors or Keiji Haino on a calm day.
The disc opens with what sounds to me like a couple false starts: two brief pieces that barely pass the one-minute mark which oddly have a copious amount of dead space. They sound like either outtakes from album sessions or a guitarist doing a sound check on an empty stage. However, by the time the third piece rolls around I'm seemingly deep in trance and time has completely warped: elapsing way faster than it seems. "Sagrado Corazón De Jesú (Second Attempt)" is a 13+ minute song which is firmly established from the beginning with low tone guitar loops. Higher tone loops are added for more coloring but the star of the tune is the wailing of the repeated and modified theme, sounding like the cry of beastly bird. Knowing Alan Sparhawk mainly as the singer for Low, I can visualize his playing of this song, completely involved in the trance that he's brought everbody else into, too involved to pay attention to time, space, or anybody in the audience. It's perhaps one of the most expressive instrumental things I've ever heard from him.
"How A Freighter Comes Into The Harbor" is the only other piece on this nine-track CD which also stretches to a great length. This nearly 18 minute bit is also constructed from various layers but with the more dissonant higher toned loops it's creepiness is undeniable. While the title suggests otherwise, to me this one evokes the feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like in a dark field, lost, as fog rolls in, making the struggle to find the way back home less possible. Scraping metallic sounds overcome the piece about 14 minutes in, painful as that metal on metal sound when old trains with rusted brakes pull to a stop at the station.
The rest of the disc is colored with short bits and pieces which are mainly noisy outbursts and rarely expanded into actual songs. I can't say for certain whether I'm less fond of the solo show-offery of something like "Eruption By Eddie Van Halen" or the lathe cutting like sounds on "How The Engine Room Sounds," but "How It Ends," the final bit on the album has a beautiful cadence. Faintly (and appropriately given some of the noisy tracks on this album) echoing "When I Go Deaf" from last year's The Great Destroyer, this one would actually have been nicer expanded into something far more substantial than the 55 second tease that it is.
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