MP3 Sumner McKane - North

Instrumental ambient guitar-based Americana

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Instrumental Rock, NEW AGE: New Age



Details:
âEver since Ry Cooder laid down his lonesome slide guitar on the laconic soundtrack to Wim Wenders's movie, PARIS, TEXAS, there has been a strain of ambient Americana music emerging throughout the country. It includes producer Daniel Lanois's cosmic cajun country, Lanterna's surf-spaghetti ambient-westerns and Bruce Kaphan's pedal steel guitar in space. Sumner McKane has been traversing the same terrain for several years now from his home in Portland, Maine and NORTH is easily his most accomplished work yet.

McKane is one of those guitarists who makes it seem simple, but his easy-going fingerstyle on electric and acoustic guitars is deceptive. He's an orchestrator of guitar, creating lush filigree and sometimes searing leads.

For NORTH, he's assembled a small, sympathetic ensemble of drums, bass and occasionally violin. "Careful it Doesn't Look Safe Yet" is typical, with double acoustic guitars laying down rivulets of sound while McKane's electric fades in and out in phantom sustains. McKane's "day job" is playing in a Country & Western band and you can hear that influence here in the plaintive fingerstyle picking and pedal-steel-like sustains and bends he brings to his electric guitar.

Track after track on NORTH, McKane paints a uniquely American landscape, a travelogue for a cross-country trip from pristine New England winters to the wide-open expanses of the plains.â

© 2005 John Diliberto




Back when post-rock didnât have a name yet - when it was just a spattering of bands with big ideas and no voices - Sumner McKane was playing country & western, touring the north-west US. Now, several years on, Sumner is still bringing the west to his home state of Maine, only these days itâs in the more subtle and laid-back form of wonderful ambient albums like North. Unmistakably immersed in country, the music usually revolves around a couple of acoustic guitars and Sumner laying down lead on an electric guitar. The music is quiet, slow, lingering and at times almost haunting; at its most minimal it could be described as some kind of an Americana version of 1 Mile North.

Cramming 13 songs onto the album, mostly around the 3-4 minute mark, this album lacks the grandiose of a band who know they can pass as post-rock such as Grace Cathedral Park. The pay-off however is that more ideas can be explored and no song feels as if it has gone on too long. If Friday Night Lights was Explosions in the Sky actually playing as if they were from Texas as some reviews said, then this is the guy who chews grass on his porch while sitting in a rocking chair, cradling a shotgun, and showing them how to do it right. The occasional track goes beyond the country slide guitars to include strings or swings the other way and strips things down to a complete minimalism, which make for nice variety. In fact one song that extends the formula a bit, "Bugs in Her Pockets and Hunting for Salamanders," is probably the highlight of the album.

When I got this CD, the evenings were warm and it was perfect to stick this on and relax, which seemed to go against the crystalline image of a New England cabin in the snow, but now that the cold is beginning to set in here and my work means I am on a bus before sunrise I can understand it all more clearly. This is a warm album, exuding the heat and stress-free attitude of the west to keep us relaxed all year round.

More people should listen to ambient Americana, forget your jazz and metal tinged post-rock kids. Weâve all seen Brokeback Mountain and Down in the Valley, cowboys in post-rock are cool. So get your checked shirts and snake skin boots, mosey on down to the ranch and Iâll meet you there.

-Ian Nicholls
www.thesilentballet.com