Glen Jones - The Wanting - Thrill Jockey - thrill271 - ****

The former front-man of the Boston psychedelic band Cul-de-Sac, Glen Jones is ageing gracefully, touting his fourth collection of acoustic guitar instrumentals.
Titles shape responses; Twenty-three Years In Happy Valley, Or Love Amongst the Chickenshit, invites us to read its banjo flurries ambiguously; the seventeen minute closer is a dense cycle of blurred finger-picking, with shuffling snare percussion from Chris Corsano, entitled The Orca Grande Cement Factory At Victorville, acknowledging John Fahey's similarly named, and comparably expansive, mid-Sixties tracks; and the eight improvised minutes of A Snapshot of Mom, Scotland, 1957 unfurl, appropriately, like a fading photographic memory.

(4/9/11)