Steve Gunn
★★★★ Other You MATADOR. CD/DL/LP
Timeless songcraft and psychedelic guitar sorcery meet on Gunn’s sixth.
A former Kurt Vile sideman with a slew of experimental releases as a vagabond instrumentalist and itinerant collaborator behind him, Steve Gunn’s sixth studio album strikes the happiest balance yet between his songwriting – lucid, tranquil, uncluttered, and unforced – and his mercurial gifts as a guitarist.
Other You’s songs are hushed, tender things, chamber pop miniatures and acoustic shuffles shaded by translucent synths and sharpened into the sort of playful pop that’s a timeless pleasure, while suggesting a darker edge. His vocals, pitched somewhere between a burr and a whisper, hang back and play cool, while his guitar-playing is incandescent, psychedelic and consistently inspired. When these two elements spark off each other just right – like on the graceful, mystic, Nick Drake-ish On The Way, or Other You, with its dreamlike coda – they yield music that is dizzyingly beautiful, but never precious.