First vocal album from famed inventive guitarist Marc Ribot. Roots, bossa nova, no-wave, free jazz and noise all feature on Map Of A Blue City – an album that took 30 years to become a reality.
Release Date: 23rd May 2025
Label: New West Records
Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital
AN IMPRESSIVE RANGE OF MUSICAL STYLES
There’s a strong possibility that your record collection features, somewhere, the imaginative, inventive guitar playing of Marc Ribot. Over the years, he’s collaborated with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Wilson Pickett, Marianne Faithfull, Caetano Veloso, Solomon Burke, Neko Case, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss and many, many others.
Map of a Blue City is, however, the first album to prominently feature Marc’s gritty, earthy, sincere vocals. It’s an album that encompasses an impressive range of musical styles that include roots, bossa nova, blues, no-wave, and free jazz, incorporates multiple flashes of fretboard brilliance and which, perhaps most impressively, demonstrates a creative, perceptive lyrical talent that maybe few imagined ever existed.
HISTORY BOURN GRACEFULLY
Most of the songs on Map Of A Blue City are Marc’s own and some of them have been in existence for a long, long time. Since the early 1990s, in fact. There have been previous attempts to release something resembling Map Of A Blue City but such attempts have been stymied by over-cautious record company execs, believing that Marc’s songs were just ‘too dark.’ But, with the help of producer/guitarist Ben Greenberg, Marc Ribot has finally been able to fashion his songs into a presentable form that blends his lo-fi home recordings with studio polish.
The album bears the weight of its history gracefully, incorporating recordings made over nearly half of Marc’s life and reflecting on how he got to this particular moment. “Working on this album for so long, I’ve seen the world change dramatically and not really change at all. Some of the issues today are the same ones I thought about when I was just starting the album, but some are things I couldn’t have dreamt of at the time. But I think that’s why I was so determined to get the production values right. Recording production is really complicated, but it all boils down to what kind of room the listener feels they’re standing in.”
“here are some hard truths and cold observations in these songs. I wanted the room to be small enough so that we couldn’t turn away; but warm enough to feel like you’re hearing it from a friend.”
CHAMBER FOLK, FLAMENCO & RAGA
A short count-in introduces opening track, Elizabeth, an engaging piece of chamber folk. Marc’s vivid vocal is backed by a contemplatively-picked acoustic guitar and a single cello. His blood-curdling lyrics: “How we prayed around your bed – your frail heart beat out its last tattoo, till the morphine could no more…” recall the final moments of his father’s life and hint at more challenging messages to come…
The sound to For Celia is fuller but Marc’s vocals and lyrics are no less disconcerting. And, if the mood of the album’s opening track recalled Leonard Cohen, then it’s Lou Reed that comes to mind here. Marc’s acoustic guitar veers between flamenco and raga and lyrics like: “It’s just romantic German bullshit – you can’t redeem yourself by weeping” will surely demand extended study and attempts at interpretation.
FLUID GUITAR
Producer Greenberg’s input is felt as a full band – light drumbeat, bass, swirling organ and swampy wah-wah guitar – provide the accompaniment for the hot, sultry, Say My Name. Marc eschews his haunted, intimate vocal style for a light falsetto, but there’s no let-up in the intensity. And the accompaniment is equally outstanding for the excellent Daddy’s Trip to Brazil – the album’s lead single and, quite possibly – it’s highlight. Plucked guitar and warm flute are fleshed out by an engaging bossa nova rhythm and lashings of dreamy saxophone as Marc recites the downsides of visiting one of the world’s most diverse countries with phrases like: “I don’t wanna meet no local girls; I don’t wanna learn Portuguese” and “Tell them to do something about the sound of those f**king waves!”
“It’s not a blue map – it only looks that that way. It’s just a map of a blue city” is the agonized refrain that propels the album’s dreamy title track and provides the foundation for an amazing passage of fluid electric guitar. It makes the following track, Death Of A Narcissist, feel light and accessible by comparison. …Narcissist features some of Marc’s best lyrics, as evinced by the song’s opening couplet: “I’ve always believed in love of my life. I find my reflection my one true redemption.” Marc spices up his acoustic guitar with flashes of electric slide and the effect is deliciously bluesy.
A SURPRISE AT EVERY TURN
The Carter Family recorded When The World’s On Fire back in 1930 and, here, Marc gives the song’s lyrics an apocalyptic interpretation that reflects the parlous state of our contemporary world. Marc’s added lyrics dilute the song’s original “…trust in God and everything will be fine” message to deliver something that is, instead, positively threatening.
Marc’s treatment of Allen Ginsberg’s poem, Sometime Jailhouse Blues is presented as a showpiece for Marc’s sheer mastery of his instrument. Ginsberg’s words are half-sung, half-spoken but, really, the listener’s focus is upon Marc’s acoustic guitar accompaniment as he turns the poem into an avant-garde blues extravaganza. And that’s almost – but not quite – the end to a unique, exhilarating album. It’s an album with a surprise at every turn, so listeners shouldn’t be taken unawares as Marc brings things to a close with Optimism Of The Spirit, a seven-minute collage of sound. Somehow, it’s a fitting way to end.
Watch the official video to Daddy’s Trip To Brazil – the album’s lead single – below:
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