Papa M

A Broke Moon Rises

Underground music legend David Pajo retains his idiosyncratic penchant for creating guitar-based music that is pensive, visceral and vividly imaginative. On this instrumental album as Papa M, he sounds like an artist and person working through a range of personal life stuff, with guitars as both his sounding boards and muses. “The Upright Path” causes a Slint fan’s ears to perk up a bit, as it may well be a spiritual, perhaps more grounded cousin to Pajo’s old band’s classic, “Don, Aman.” “Walt’s” possesses a similar kind of unsteady, meditative mood; it’s another bare array of notes that seem to stay in time, but also slip every so often to create a kind of false calm. The lumbering yet dizzying “A Lighthouse Reverie” performs a different kind of hypnosis, as its first half rests upon a layered flurry of arpeggios, which eventually gives way to a break before a gentler chord progression and basic percussion brings the song steadily to shore (though someone, presumably Pajo, is actually heard to mutter “Fucking hell” as the final notes ring). Pajo is a vital master of musical trickery and virtuosity, and it feels particularly fortunate that he remains in our midst. (Drag City)