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SLINGSHOT PROFESSIONALS
(RYKODISC)
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There’s always been a poetry to Kelly Joe Phelps’s acoustic-guitar playing, whether he’s chosen to use the language of the blues, as he did on his earlier albums, or his own dialect of improvisation. In recent years, the latter has allowed him to unspool his lyrics over an ever-evolving bed of music. Because he’s played and recorded solo, he’s been able to chase any and all impulses in his dense weave of slide and single-note lines. It was impressive that he was able to keep his freewheeling sense of creativity alive through 2001’s Sky like a Broken Clock, which he recorded with a trio. But now that he’s upped his recording band to five pieces, including keyboards, strings, acoustic bass, and Weissenborn acoustic lap slide guitar, most of these songs seem like finite texts — at least in terms of their recorded arrangements. They have to be to incorporate so many musicians playing multiple melodies, as well as guest turns by Bill Frisell (who applies looped guitar to " Cardboard Box of Batteries " ) and harmony singer Petra Haden. What’s also changed is Phelps’s storytelling: he’s backed away from his narrative style into something more abstract — small stacks of verse that hint at emotions or the contrary impulses of human nature and then flit off to another idea. Even an outright character study, like the relationship meltdown " Circle Wars, " lacks the kind of clarity his writing has shown in the past. Maybe vague lyrics are his way of compensating for the concrete nature of this music — a complete turn-around from his earlier approach. Regardless, the poetry of his guitar is still intact, roiling along in a bubbling, rich-toned conversational manner that’s as sweet, shining, and natural as a bunch of ripe grapes.
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