A sometimes perversely evasive listen, Amidon remains in charge of his muse, capturing the extremes of American Music of the last 200 years.

Release Date: 24th January 2025

Label: River Lea

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

NO ONE TRICK PONY

Amidon is no one trick pony, neither two, three or, even, four, a seemingly restless presence never willing to tie himself down into any one set agenda. This recording is no different, and offers a sometimes baffling and always beguiling introduction to the opposing priorities in his musical mindset, where old time folk traditions have to share a pew with free jazz and electronica. Indeed, rather than single-mindedly pursuing one or other, here they conjoin, often within the same track. And you remain glad he tried, even if occasionally the outcome is less than alchemical, conflicting rather than consuming.

Made with the trio of himself on guitars, bass, fiddle, vocals and more, Sam Gendel on saxophones, synths and production and Philippe Melanson on percussion, finalisation of many the selections came late, both in choice of material and how the playing might pan out. That experimentalism is important to Amidon, if making, also, to the greater challenge of a listen. But you feel he would want it that way.

PENTANGLE-Y…

First out is Oldenfjord, an instrumental. Flowingly picked guitars, acoustic and electric, weave together over a clattery skitter of percussion, before some breathy sax blows in. Bar the instrumentation, the feel is very Pentangle-y, it coming from the pen of Grey Larsen, an American proponent of flute and concertina. As the sax dips and dives it sometimes sounds more wind than reed, it no later surprise to learn that Gendel was playing an electronic instrument, even if the sound seems so assuredly organic. That similar feel leaks into the first song, Three Five, enhanced by Amidon’s voice being not so far different from Bert Jansch, in both phrasing and tone. Based on Old Churchyard, a hymn, if not hymnal, it is certainly spiritual.

The tack turns suddenly for Big Sky. Ushered in by synths and thundering electronic drums, mournful vocals kick in, feeling as if ceded from a different source and century. It takes a while to fully appreciate this is Lou Reed’s Big Sky, the last track from 2000’s Ecstasy, so acutely altered is the setting. Layers gradually add the organic to the electronic and it offers a delectably blurred haze of context.

OLD TIMEY MUSIC

Amidon’s love of old timey music emerges for Old Tavern, if initially disguised behind a slowly revolving sequencer pattern. A flurry of sawed fiddle breaks in, with jaw’s harp for ballast, and, for a minute or so it is hoedown hurley, ahead a switch to a calm sense of foreboding, if that can be. (Measured dread?) Gendel adds some freeform sax noodle and it drifts a little dysymmetrically, with an ending that feels incomplete. Yet it works. The trad of ballad, Golden Willow Tree is similarly subjugated by the minimalism of the tune sparring with an aberrant parallel countermelody. Brilliant or fast forward. you decide, but it’ll be different each time you listen. The is it harp or is it guitar that enters towards the end is gorgeous.

I was unfamiliar with the idea of shape note singing ahead of I’m On My Journey Home, it being a format to aid congregations to carry a tune within a rigid scale, sight reading notes as shapes. Sort of. Here the deceptively simple melody, almost a tone poem, is the vocal lead, and, in the chapel, would be all you get. Here there is upfront acoustic bass, a distant fiddle drone and some ambient sax that take away the attention. It possibly needs a rewind and replay to fully get it, even if that breaks the overall flow. If nothing else it alerts how Gendel is mixing up the bass, track by track, which I like, as I do the faster and acapella return of the now choral vocals.

TREADING THIN ICE

From the chapel to the thin ice of Yoko Ono is a brave step, with her Ask The Elephant coming as a recitation over some improvised backing. More palate cleanser than integral course, it is certainly that, ahead a further shape note source, Cusseta, where the repetition, with slight variation, is more overt, the bass and the vocals on the same sheet. That is until the trio take away the control for some more detached dissonance, ending on a howl of sax.

By now, this is normal and expected. Friends And Neighours isn’t, some apparent doggerel, repeated over skronks and skirls of backing. That it is a rare song by Ornette Coleman, it comes only as surprise that the saxophone maverick ever wrote lyrics or sang them/had them sang, but I can report that his own version was very much more conventional. The temptation to say WTF is countered by the fact I can’t get the darn thing out my ear!

WHERE NEXT?

Lest you wonder where next he strays, final track, Never, is a near return to the stability of the opening salvo of tracks, a melancholic ballad, with a simple guitar motif, and fiddle, which gradually weaves in the fiddle tune, John Crehan’s Her Long Hair Flowing Down Her Back, slightly off-key at first. As it breaks into instrumental, a staccato military percussion is added, to a fade that returns with a further coda, in reprise, incorporating all three players, the folk and jazz elements sparring now more contentedly. A consummate conclusion to a sometimes confusing album, one has to respect Amidon’s approach. One might argue that if a listen is challenging, then why waste the effort. This is the argument for so doing.

I’m On My Journey Home, aided and abetted by a very spooky gothic video, putting in a further perspective:

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