Songs In Time Of Plague
Neuma, 2022
8/10
Listen to Songs In Time Of Plague
The midwestern multi-instrumentalist Alex Lubet pens a very atypical solo effort here, where steel guitar and mountain dulcimer are utilized across 18 tracks of spontaneous song craft.
“On The Seventh Hour”, the lone track with steel guitar, opens with a bare, mysterious quality, where space and tension are fleshed out with strong attention to detail for the 18 absorbing minutes.
“Seventeen Songs In Time Of Plague” follows, and presents 17 chapters that range from the soft and pretty “Generation”, to the intricate progressions of the flowing “Occasion”. Further still, “Space” is particularly sparse with its well timed and poetic bouts of strings, while the final track, “Eternity”, emits a dreamy quality, where firm playing exits the listen with much allure.
An improvised affair that is highly technical, Lubet doesn’t use a pick, hammer, capos or any other tools here, and his very skilled playing is quite colorful and textured superbly across the experimental, enjoyable listen.
Travels well with: Dan Kurfirst- Arkinetics; Lawson & Merrill- Signals