Guitar Noire
This is serious music. And funny, too...and melancholic. Love the variety between beautiful melodies and improvised explorations!
Favorite track: R.U.R..
After a series of solo, duo, and trio recordings, Baltimore-based pedal steel maven Susan Alcorn steps out on her own as a bandleader with Pedernal.
Enlisting a top-flight band (frequent collaborators Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek, Mark Feldman, and Ryan Sawyer), Alcorn debuts five wide-ranging original tunes that draw from the many musical worlds she’s passed through, touching on jazz swing, improvisatory exploration, and pedal-steel twang. The title track and the suite-like “Circular Ruins,” both written during a month off the grid in a cabin in New Mexico, display both her gift for melody and her appetite for following where improvisation leads. “Night in Gdansk,” long a staple of her solo sets, and the hand-clap-driven “Northeast Rising Sun” bookend the emotional extremes of the music, from brooding to buoyant.
Animated by her compositions and fantastic ensemble and solo performances, Pedernal paints a comprehensive musical self-portrait of an artist reaching a peak.
credits
released November 13, 2020
Susan Alcorn, pedal steel guitar
Mark Feldman, violin
Michael Formanek, bass
Mary Halvorson, guitar
Ryan Sawyer, drums
Recorded Nov. 12, 2019, at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY
Engineered by John Davis
Mixed by Ron St. Germain
Mastered by A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio
All compositions by Susan Alcorn (ASCAP)
Executive producer, Kevin Reilly
Photos, David Lobato
Artwork, Esther Kirshenbaum
Graphic design, Susan Alcorn and Spl@T!
LP art direction, Chad Pelton
Mary Halvorson is a genius composer and guitarist who has developed her own musical language, and with Code Girl she has incorporated poetry into that language. Incredible compositions and lyricism (each track is a different kind of poem). Halvorson's playing is as great as usual, and all the other members of the band sound great. Robert Wyatt's singing in particular works extremely well in the tracks he's featured. Highly, highly recommend. rat