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On A Trick of the Light, Chicago resident and Houston-born guitarist Eli Winter jaunts through West Texas, where the Marfa Lights glimmer on the horizon, cigarette smoke softens the glow of neon bar signs, and Tejano music drifts through the perennial breeze. His clear instrumental prowess aside, Winter’s tracks shine most when he allows ample room for the music to grow, in whichever way that might be. Indeed, Winter often lets his compositions write themselves, trying to “learn what the music wants” and trusting “when it wants something or doesn't want it”, he explained while discussing this record. But it feels like he’s always had this perspective. Several tracks on A Trick of the Light and previous records – including his acclaimed 2022 self-titled album and 2020’s Unbecoming – often stretch well over the five minute mark, which help to fortify a sense of confidence and novelty throughout. What often feels like a track’s conclusion is actually the beginning of something entirely new – an Escherian shift in vantage point. A trick of the light, perhaps.
Take the album’s opener “Arabian Nightingale” (originally written by Don Cherry), for example. The track begins with a new crunchy-clean electronic guitar tone for Winter, which is heard throughout the album, before Sam Wagster joins on pedal steel and Tyler Damon’s drums emerge (which are, across the record, phenomenal). After 10 minutes, Winter and company have guided us by caravan through a bazaar of exotic sights and sounds, eventually delivering a maelstrom of free form jazz with help from Gerrit Hatcher on tenor sax and Andrew Scott on bass. But the track isn’t over. We’re tossed like a tumbleweed back to the American midwest with Winter and Wagster’s ethereal restraint -- perhaps that enchanted, moonlit journey was just a mirage. But we’re fooled once again, as we slowly start to recognize Cherry’s magical riff reemerge and Winter and company finish off the track in style. The other cover on the album – Carla Bley’s masterpiece “Ida Lupino” – is another entrancing endeavor. Both tracks are not recreations, but intelligent interpretations that are repositioned in new contexts.
Another defining strength of the record is its persistent sense of idiosyncrasy. In an essay on independent touring he wrote for Los Angeles Review of Books, Winter claims, “my [live] music has about as little mediation as possible between what I do and what the audience hears.” This same immediacy comes through on A Trick of the Light, and perhaps nowhere is it clearer than on the title track. While Winter and Wagster once again create a vast landscape of speculation, Damon’s drums haphazardly scuttle along in no apparent direction. When David Grubbs’ electronic guitar and Luke Sutherland’s violin are introduced, it is difficult to tell when one ends and another begins. The result feels unscripted – less like a recorded studio album, and more like we’ve fortunately stumbled out of the hot Texas sun and into an oasis of dizzying improvisation.
To be clear, it is not true that Winter and his collaborators sound fragmented. Quite the opposite, in fact. Take, for example, the passionate lead single “Cracking the Jaw”, a track that demonstrates Winter’s instinct for structure amidst his deeply collaborative ethos. Winter calls it “the closest thing I have to a pop song” and it serves as a grounding force for the album. The same solidarity can be heard further in the free-flowing “For a Fallen Rocket”, beginning with Eli Schmitt’s harmonium and finishing off with Hatchett’s sax, and the introspective “Black Iris on a Burning Quilt”, which includes Kiran Leonard on cittern and Alex McKenzie on bass clarinet. It’s obvious that Winter understands the essence he and his musicians are transmitting, and he pays heed at arranging each track to balance the styles of each collaborator without diminishing their individuality.
With this new record, Winter’s fortitude is on full display. It feels unabridged yet restrained, folksy yet contemporary, busy yet bucolic – a matter of perspective, a trick of the light. It stands as a testament to Winter’s sincere devotion to remain a fully independent instrumentalist along with his natural tendency to collaborate with great musicians. With other recent releases by artists such as Daniel Bachman, Sam Amidon, Nathan Salsburg, and Marisa Anderson (among many others), modern Americana folk music is in good hands.
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