George Winston: Montana: A Love Story

From the opening piano notes of Montana: A Love Story, George Winston fans are sure to feel they've returned to safer ground after his last album, The Night Divides the Day, the pianist's dip into the acid rock of The Doors. There's nothing on Montana that wouldn't feel at home to anyone who has followed him since his first two albums on Takoma and Windham Hill records. Winston has carved out a space for open air melodies that seem to echo off the Montana plains that have provided so much of his metaphorical imagery over the years. It's an attractive sound which at it's best, recalls Keith Jarrett's more contemplative ruminations and at it's worst, sounds like cocktail music by someone without a good fake book. The pure Winston sound can be heard on his originals, including "High Plains Lullaby," as well as covers like Mark Isham's childlike "Thumbelina." But Winston also plays Celtic tunes, Sam Cooke's R&B hit, "You Send Me," and Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene." And just to put you on edge, he does Frank Zappa's angular "The Little House I Used to Live In." He says it reminded him of the little house in which he grew up in Montana. When he explores these different styles, he becomes a more generic pianist, the kind you might hear at the local shopping mall. But on the reverie of "Sweet Soul" and the exoticism of "Sky," the distinct Winston sound is revealed as he continues to forge his brand of American Plains piano. --John Diliberto

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Will Ackerman: Returning

Guitarist Will Ackerman has often re-recorded his own songs, coming back years later with new interpretations and perhaps more refined techniques. Returning, however, consists entirely of new recordings of songs from the Ackerman archives. The founder of Windham Hill records, this is his first recording off the label since founding the company in 1976. He sold it in 1992, but has continued on it as an artist until now. Cynics might view this as a ploy to retain control of his catalogue, a common practice for artists who jump labels.
Returning is thus a greatest hits CD, albeit of all new performances. The playing and recording are sharper here than on those old Windham Hill favorites and Ackerman's compositions have rarely sounded more poignant. "Unconditional" appears even more classical and ruminative than it's original, while the new version of "The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter" makes the 1977 version sound antique, like a dusty slack-stringed balalaika from the attic. Drawing from his more plaintive repertoire, Ackerman leaves songs like the bluegrass-tinged "The Pink Chiffon Tricycle Queen" and collaborations with Buckethead behind. What remains are songs that have become old-friends to Will Ackerman fans, newly polished and slightly refurbished. --John Diliberto

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Lori Carson: The Finest Thing

With her breathy, fragile voice and introspective lyrics, Lori Carson has released several albums in what might be called the conventional singer-songwriter mode, and the opening title track of The Finest Thing, a gentle ballad, might lead you to think this is another album in that vein. But Carson has also worked with avant-rockers the Golden Palominos and music saboteur Bill Laswell. That's what gives The Finest Thing a gritty edge with distorted hissing, amp buzzes, and strange aliasing that must be intentional for an artist of her experience. Centered largely on plaintive acoustic guitar ostinatos with touches of electric guitar, occasional trumpet, and spare keyboard, The Finest Thing yields quiet reveries, sometimes with lyrics, but more often by casting wordless ghost vocals into the abyss. She's clearly listened to the early ambient music of Brian Eno and "Grey World" sounds like an homage to Music for Airports. In an age of supralingua divas like Lisa Gerrard and Azam Ali, Carson's "La-La-La-Ohh" vocalizing can sound trite, but there's an appealing intimacy to The Finest Thing, like pages from a personal scrapbook: rough edges, sketchy drawings, and a bit of insight into a mind at work. --John Diliberto

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Green Isac: Etnotronica

Green Isac inhabits a quirky world of ambient music where charming melodies and arrangements fall somewhere between faux-exotica and the trash heap, a meeting ground of the Penguin Café Orchestra with Cluster. Etnotronica continues the sound the Norwegian duo began back in 1991 with pulsing ethno-percussive rhythms loops, global exotica and elliptical structures that keep folding back in on themselves. Engagingly guileless, Green Isac is as likely to pick up djembe's and bongos as Moog bass and Fender Rhodes piano. Lap steel guitar meets yang-ch'in (Chinese hammered dulcimer) at a crossroads of African drums and electronic pulsations on "Dr. Talk's Bagpipe." What sets them apart from so many of their peers, who simply loop rhythms into drones of infinity, is a gift for the hook. Andreas Eriksen is a member of the electro-pop group, Bel Canto and that melodic sensibility carries over to Green Isac. In fact, Bel Canto singer, Anneli Drecker guests on "Siamese Drum," with some of her patented ecstatic wordless vocalese. Green Isac orchestrates an often haunting sound world, but instead of a wink, they've got a twinkle in their eyes.
John Diliberto

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