Seabuckthorn: A House With Too Much Fire
La Cordillère / Bookmaker Records

To describe British instrumentalist Andy Cartwright as an acoustic guitarist isn't inaccurate—his ninth release under the Seabuckthorn alias resonates with the sound of twelve-string and resonator guitars—but it does sell him short: A House With Too Much Fire is considerably more than a showcase for his considerable axe wizardry; instead, the instrument operates as but one element (albeit a primary one) in a larger array that enables him to create rich evocations using circumspect instrumental means.

Recorded in late 2017 in Veynes, France, the album sees Cartwright augmenting the bowing, fingerpicking, and slide playing of guitar with banjo, clarinet, synthesizer, and percussion. As methodically developed as the material sounds, it was recorded rather spontaneously, with parts laid down in single takes and a loose, improvisatory feel guiding the process. Stylistically, A House With Too Much Fire ranges widely, with blues, folk, country, and ambient drawn upon, sometimes within a single setting.

The title track introduces the album on a grand, sweeping note with dramatic slide textures, the thrum of which results in a trembling rumble suggestive of breathtaking mountain vistas. Pitch-bending imbues the presentation with a fantastical quality as if the muffled wail is emerging from the landscape and not something as simple as an instrument. “Inner” brings things back to earth with psychedelia-tinged guitar figures reminiscent of an early Doors jam accompanied by the kind of drum pattern one might hear at an Indigenous peoples ceremony. With a formal beat pattern stripped out, “Disentangled” meanders contentedly, its hazy ambient backdrop overlaid by fingerpicked musings.

A few pieces are of a more straight-up folk-styled vintage. Banjo picking nudges the otherwise ambient flutter of “It Was Aglow” into countrified territory, whereas bluesy acoustic guitar figures animate the banjo- and tremolo-inflected atmospherics of “Submerged Past.” Effectively illustrating Cartwright's tacit credo that considerations of compositional design should supercede all else is “Blackout,” which eschews soloing per se for a spectral soundscape-styled exploration where fragments of clarinet, bowed strings, and percussion work in tandem to reinforce the ghostly impression. In similar manner, “Somewhat Like Vision,” speckled with resonator-fueled textures and smothered in clarinet-accented fog, exhales in slow-motion like an elemental breath arising from a barren landscape.

May 2018