Soft Abuse
Langtry : As Upon The Road Thereto (US,2004)****
I noticed the releases of Iron Wine sometime before, but never came to purchase or listen to complete albums. But now when I heard that their guitarist, Patrick McKinney has made a solo guitar album, then it was time to check it out.
Lately I saw the Wim Wenders movie on the blues, Soul of a Man, about Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir showing something essential of the blues : a performance with a sublimation of the suffering, and even with some transcending humour, while the new blues inspirations that were shown (Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Cassandra Wilson,..) often made me wonder if my own personal taste (mostly I do not like blues,) wasn’t confirmed by the idea that blues on its own isn’t such a terrific stylistic genre that automatically has a “life” of its own. With many of the new white blues musicians there is also a different kind of suffering, which seems to me more driven by a lazy and perhaps even spiritless city life and an empty wandering mind. (habit ?). There I wondered where has the real spirit of the music gone rather than this description of the “small pain” coming from a lazy feeling and an empty life ? Takoma guitarists, like John Fahey, on the other hand, uplifted also the blues with other kind of improvisations to a level of skilful and moody creative art. It’s in this new, musically, sophisticated and rich tradition Patrick McKinney travels. It’s the kind of improvisational journey of a traveller or wanderer or perhaps even storyteller in instrumental, from reating filmic expressions, very descriptive and with many changes and evolutions when it moves and moves on. Perfect like it is.
