Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film)

Glenn Jones, like so many of the guitar players in his field of creation, is centered around the “American Primitivism” school of thought that was pioneered by guitar legends like John Fahey and Robbie Basho. With extensive usage of steel acoustic guitar with highly crafty and sophisticated finger picking and different tunings for every song he creates, Glenn Jones is easily one of the closest in comparison to what John Fahey and the pioneers of American Primitive were doing. With his youth centered around the pivotal era of the 60′s, Glenn Jones doesn’t copy what John Fahey was doing but comes from the same world that branched out a very unique style of acoustic guitar playing. After hearing Axis: Bold as Love from The Jimi Hendrix Experience in his young teen years, playing guitar was a must for Glenn.

Glenn Jones is carrying the torch for the avenue of sound that focuses its attention to emotion and not just staggering amounts of scales and notes. The guitar ability of Glenn Jones is of course virtuoso on every level, but there is something more natural and raw in the way the bends, pulls, finger picks and strums his compositions into shape. With 3 solo albums on the prestigious Portland, OR based Strange Attractors Audio House prior to this year and over 10 records that span the last 20 years with Cul De Sac, Glenn Jones has continued to release records at a very active rate since the 90′s. A rate that one could already attribute the prolific tag to and for far more reasons than just an album number count. Cul De Sac has been known in the Boston avant experimental scene since the early 90′s. Their collaborations with vocalist of Can, Damo Suzuki along with an album featuring John Fahey himself have highlighted the groups deep roots in many modes of modern sound. Glenn Jones and John Fahey were friends for over 20 years and the imprint John made on Glenn shows in all of his recordings.

Photo from Front Porch Productions

In partnership with Thrill Jockey Records, Glenn Jones has embarked on the release of his 4th solo album in the style of American Primitive. Released in September of this year, the 11 track collection of original compositions is creating a buzz in the acoustic community. The album we are referring to: The Wanting. This new album is crafted with acoustic steel string guitar, six-string, 10-string and bottleneck, and 5-string open-back banjo. Outside of the 17 minute masterpiece ‘The Orca Grande Cement Factory at Victorville’, every piece contains solo work outs exclusively from Glenn Jones. Recorded in Glenn’s apartment in a suburb in Massachusetts, the ethereal and emotional impact plays wonders on the mind as you sit and invision the setting of the trains faint sound in the background along the environment of the room, the guitar Glenn is playing down to how he must have been tapping his feet to keep time. Every piece shows a perfect balanced state of technique and raw power. Every song soaks with the rich imagery of someone making love through sound. According to Thrill Jockey, “The Wanting, Glenn Jones’ first album for Thrill Jockey, was recorded in a fourth floor apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, Allston, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, overlooking the commuter train line. If you listen carefully to the record, you can occasionally hear trains going by in the background.”

The Wanting isn’t high end studio polished tricks; it is rather created in the type of setting that musicians like Robert Johnson and John Fahey worked in the best. Rustic, raw and lyrical in so many ways, the actions of the strings resonance coupled together with the unique style that Glenn has is the only formula possible for an album like The Wanting. The bottle neck slide guitar on ‘Even to Win is to Fail’ is as raw as it gets, there are only a handful of people who are fortunate enough to put this type of sound on record. With the traditional setting in place and the roots of Americana acoustic guitar as the root and foundation, The Wanting dives into complex and original territory that are extremely unique from the odd tunings on every song. Glenn Jones revealed this bit of information about the tuning process to Thrill Jockey, “The Wanting explores some of the possibilities of open tunings. (I stopped playing in standard tuning more than 25 years ago now.) I’m always digging under rocks and looking for something new, unfamiliar, unknown. I can’t help it. The discovery of new tunings inevitably leads to new compositions, the composition being, for me, a way of navigating a new and unfamiliar terrain. The more I learn about a tuning, however, the more bored I become by it, and this boredom sends me scurrying, again, for something else. This is why almost every one of my compositions is in its own tuning. I invent a tuning, find a way to get from Point A to Point Z in it, and move on.”

2xLP limited to 1000 copies

One of the highest moments of the album is the last piece, ‘The Orca Grande Cement Factory at Victorville’. A 17 minute masterpiece, the song is a perfect sonic departure from the rest of the album. While retaning the American Primitive sound found through the first 10 songs of the record, Glenn Jones has a new trick up his sleeve with the inclusion of virtuoso and very young drummer, Chris Corsano. Starting off with a very light and almost delightful acoustic guitar part, the drums ever so slightly present themselves as Glenn builds up the emotional tapestry. Once the dynamic and pulse change from this delightful state to a somewhat distressed, and worried mind, the drums become more announced yet cut out like a damaged drum machine. The drumming parts almost sound electronic with the way they come in and out of the mix and how fast the snare is attacked. It’s a state of restrain yet vast exploration, something that even floored Glenn Jones with the end result. “The Wanting has three new banjo pieces on it. All of them, for whatever reason, are relatively short in comparison to my guitar pieces. I also think they give the album its varied feel – they’re a nice complement to the guitar pieces, which tend to be longer and more emotionally complex. The other piece that is a bit of a departure, perhaps, is the last track on the album, the 17-minute long “The Orca Grande Cement Factory at Victorville” (the title is an homage to John Fahey’s “The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, California” (1967)).

The piece is a duet with drummer Chris Corsano, who I first heard at the Brattleboro (Vermont) Free Folk Festival of 2003, a watershed event. It was my discovery of a kind of grassroots, underground music that embraced folk forms and free jazz. It struck a blow against the “boy’s club” feel of so many of these kinds of events; here there were as many powerful and uncompromising women performers as men. It was at this festival I heard for the first time Jack Rose, MV + EE, Christina and Tom Carter, and many, many others, including Chris Corsano, whose spectacularly confident, over-the-top drumming belied his youth by at least a decade-and-a-half. When he agreed to accompany me on this piece, I knew two things: 1.) whatever my expectations might be, he would surprise me, and 2.) whatever he came up with would make me sound better than I am! I couldn’t be happier with the track, which destroys me every time I hear it.” The textures that revolve around the constant pulse of the guitar picking is transfixing and it is a beautiful ending to an emotionally and complex arrangements of songs.

Photo from Villa Villa Nola

The song that stands out to me the most on this record and one that I find myself putting on repeat is ‘Of Its Own Kind’. The song is very reflective of the duality that exists in this type of natural music. The train tracks, buildings and other imprints of the human technology interlace with the over bearing emotional buoyancy that resonates in the acoustic world. Like most of the 6 and 12 string pieces, ‘Of Its Own Kind’ is over 7 minutes in length and with needed reason. Starting off with lush almost brushed out chords that flow like a stream that is just taking shape, the beginning is very soft and angelic in nature. It is the sound of those first bursts of sun rays over a horizon while the mourning dew sits on all the living and non living things in site. Once the finger picking come into place, the song flows more forcefully but ever so gently with the highest level of beauty and grace. If you have ever been around a new born and seen the smile of joy that runs through them when they see you, that is the same feeling this song evokes.

The Wanting is music everyone can enjoy, no matter what your previous experience with music is. This new LP from Glenn Jones is another chapter in the legacy and shcool of thought John Fahey created and shows how complex and primitive sound can exist together in complete harmony. From the primitive album cover art to the elongated and beautiful moments of sound on every piece, The Wanting is Glenn Jones at his most honest, original, and complex yet primitive exploratory emotional vehicle of expression. Don’t miss out on owning this timeless piece of art.

By Erik Otis

Glenn Jones
The Wanting
Thrill Jockey Records

1. A Snapshot of Mom, Scotland, 1957
2. The Great Pacific Northwest
3. The Great Swamp Way Rout
4. Anchor Chain Blues
5. Even to Win is to Fail
6. My Charlotte Blue Notebook
7. Menotomy River Blues
8. Of Its Own Kind
9. The Wanting
10. Twenty-Three Years in Happy Valley, or Love Among the Chickenshit
11. The Orca Grande Cement Factory at Victorville

Order the CD or LP HERE

• CD version comes in a 4 panel mini-LP style gatefold package and includes a 4 page booklet with notes on each song
• Limited 2xLP version comes in a gatefold jacket and includes a free download coupon. First vinyl pressing is limited to only 1,000 copies