Glenn Jones: Against Which the Sea Continually Beats

Since 1989, Glenn Jones has led Boston's "avant -garage" instrumental rock band Cul de Sac, whose musical adventures are documented on nine albums to date, including a soundtrack for cult-director Roger Corman (The Strangler's Wife, 2003), and collaborations with guitarist John Fahey (The Epiphany of Glenn Jones, 1996) and former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki (Abhayamudra, 2004). A 30-plus-year devotee of the so-called "Takoma school," Jones has written extensively on the steel-string guitar's leading lights: John Fahey, with whom he was friends for nearly 25 years, and Robbie Basho, who befriended Jones during the five years before his untimely death in 1986. In 2001, Jones began playing acoustic guitar in earnest, which he hadn't touched in more than a decade. In 2004, Jones stepped out of the long shadow cast by Takoma's guitar visionaries and offered his own "new possibility" -- This Is the Wind That Blows It Out, an impeccable album of acoustic 6 & 12-string beauty, released to rave review. Since then, Jones has kept busy performing with many leading lights of the guitar soli movement, past and present, while penning new material for what is destined to be known as his crowning achievement. Against Which the Sea Continually Beats is an indisputable triumph of acoustic guitar composition, a reverential and innovative melding of sound and form.

Against Which the Sea Continually Beats was recorded over four days during late September 2006 in beautiful West Tinsbury, Martha's Vineyard, MA. The peaceful, seafaring setting of the island community inspired the recording sessions, lending an air of tranquility that served to coax from Glenn Jones impeccable performances, most of which were captured in just one take. Bookended by the brief slide blues laments "Island 1" and "Island 2", Against Which the Sea Continually Beats' eleven tunes travel from Delta to Appalachia, from classical to a cinematic sort of folk sound in a language that is purely imbued in the artists' own dialect. "David and the Phoenix" unfurls like a Robbie Basho-style American Raga, but with a particular propulsion laden with melodic hooks to keep it from floating away; "Little Dog's Day", originally found on Imaginational Anthem Vol. 1 as a previous recording, benefits greatly from the Martha's Vineyard sessions as the overall feel is more relaxed and precise, lending a bit of bounce and swagger to the folk ditty. "Freedom Raga", a staple in Jones' live set, at 11:04 is the longest tune on the album and although not a raga at all but rather a triumphant 12-string straddling of the Mason-Dixon line, it is every bit as epic in scope as the title suggests; and "The Teething Necklace (For John Fahey)", a tune that Jones was working on in 2001 when he got the news that John Fahey had died, finally fleshed itself out while touring Europe with Jack Rose and is in itself a tremendously nuanced, delicately understated bit of fingerstyle allegory.

Graceful and subtle, resonating with confidence and at times sheer power, Against Which the Sea Continually Beats is a masterpiece of guitar soli by a truly singular talent.

-Strange Attractors