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Edsel Axle - Variable Happiness (2023)
Review:
We’ve come to know the Philadelphia indie artist Rosali through her clarion Americana-tinged songwriting and the thumping primitivism of her punk trio the Long Hots. We have not, up to now, considered her closely as a guitar player, which is perhaps short-sighted since she does that in both bands. Here she brings the electric guitar up to the front, taking up a glove laid down by Bill Orcutt, Bardo Pond, Loren Connors and others. Over six tracks as Edsel Axle, she improvises jagged rock riffs and electrified acid folk, just her and a guitar and a four-track, but definitely plugged in. Rosali’s band has a couple of other worthy guitar players in David Nance and James Schroeder, so one faulty assumption might be that the Neil Young-ish flavor on 2021’s No Medium came from them (Nance’s solo and band work leans that way as well). But here, by herself, and not burdened by the need to sing, Ms. Middleton demonstrates that she, herself, has a bit of the Crazy Horse fixation. These songs sound like the instrumental freakery between verses on Ragged Glory or Sleeps with Angels. The guitar carves out giant, resonating figures in the opener “Some Answer,” letting the long notes ring out, then splintering them into buzzing, disintegrating feedback hum. This opening salvo is the most rock and least folk leaning of the six, with a keening wail vibrating under lapping layers of distorted melody. You can hear bits of Loren Connors in the way rage and beauty coincide here, a roar in even the most tranquil, pensive moments. The title track runs a little cooler, building contemplative space out of steady picked patterns and resonating threads of melody. This one has the quiet assurance of certain Steve Gunn instrumentals, eschewing pyrotechnics for a clear, unobstructed line of sight. It’s also manifestly a solo piece, without looped or overdubbed embellishment. By contrast, “Come Down from the Tree” is denser and more dizzying, punctuated with loud, echoing chords and letting flurries of quicker notes linger in insect hives of buzzing overtones. It reminds me a bit of Bright, a band I hadn’t thought about in years, for its sun-dappled balance of clarity and mystery. If you look past the lack of voice and flute, you might also hear a little Bardo Pond here, the howl of feedback like an undertow beneath long-toned serenity. These tracks are all relatively lengthy, all built around repeated motifs and without conventional song structure, yet they are consistently engrossing. There’s an abstract, chaotic beauty in these evolving compositions, the fire that you normally find between Rosali verses let loose on its own terms. — By Jennifer Kelly, dustedmagazine
Track List:
01 - Some Answer
02 - Present Moment
03 - Variable Happiness
04 - Come Down from the Tree Now
05 - Her Wind Horse
06 - Singular Grace
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, experimental
Country: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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