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Shane Parish – Repertoire (2024)
Review:
A self-taught guitar virtuoso, Shane Parish has been honing his craft for over 20 years as a soloist and leader of the avant-rock group Ahleuchatistas. More recently, the Georgia-based musician has found wider recognition as a member of Bill Orcutt’s sensational Guitar Quartet. Keeping it in the family, his latest solo album Repertoire appears on Orcutt’s label Palilalia, with insightful liner notes by Quartet bandmate Wendy Eisenberg. Parish’s previous releases have had a particular focus, from old-timey folk and blues to sea shanties, and selections from the Chet Baker songbook. Drawing from the wells of jazz, punk, electronic music, and modern composition, Repertoire is more open, reflecting his intention to “expand the canon of solo guitar repertoire and approach.” And how! In a beautiful act of translation, Repertoire brings different eras, styles, and instrumental techniques into conversation. An inspired take on Kraftwerk’s “Europe Endless” captures the elegant neo-classical form of the original, while situating it in the fingerstyle guitar tradition through intricate picking patterns and an open G tuning. As a result, the piece simultaneously evokes Kraftwerk’s gleaming techno-utopianism and vintage Americana, as if we’re glitching between a neon-lit Trans Europe Express and a rickety Appalachian steam train. Parish defamiliarizes the jazz tunes by using tunings associated with folk music and the standard “guitar keys” of C, G, D, A and E. Charles Mingus’s “Better Get Hit In Your Soul” is played in a open D tuning, the heavy metal swagger of the introduction moving into a lilting country-folk dance. Both Orcutt and Otomo Yoshihidi have recorded highly expressive electric guitar versions of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” Parish’s acoustic rendering is more understated but equally moving, his thumb strokes echoing Charlie Haden’s double bass dirge, while his fingers draw out the blues and folk feeling. The brightly colored plumage of Roland Kirk’s “Serenade to a Cuckoo” brings to mind the luscious Brazilian guitar of Luiz Bonfa and Baden Powell, Sun Ra’s “Lights On Satellite” takes us way out, the strange intervals of its melody woven between crabby clusters and an insistent bass pattern. For Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda,” Parish digs into Cecil McBee’s hypnotic bassline, while echoing Coltrane’s harp and the modal swirl of Pharoah Sanders’s saxophone: a remarkable performance. Perhaps the most conventionally jazzy tune is the Mr. Rogers gem “It’s You I Like,” the eccentric harmonic extensions underlining the song’s inclusive message. On “Totem Ancestor,” Parish follows John Cage’s notated melody and counterpoint, while referencing his piano preparations by downtuning the bottom string a half step, introducing an ambiguous harmonic quality into the texture. The Satie-like piano colors of Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14” translate beautifully to acoustic guitar, taking on a sweetly reflective folk flavor. Then there are the two guitar covers. Parish is faithful to the flamenco punk roll of The Minutemen’s “Cohesion,” making subtle variations in the picking pattern, while a strange and tender reading of Captain Beefheart’s “One Red Rose That I Mean,” adds rhythmic displacements to Zoot Horn Rollo’s blues abstractions. — bandcamp
Track List:
01 - Lonely Woman
02 - Serenade to a Cuckoo
03 - Avril 14th
04 - Cohesion
05 - Pithecanthropus Erectus
06 - It's You I Like
07 - Totem Ancestor
08 - Europe Endless
09 - Reincarnation of a Lovebird
10 - Out to Lunch
11 - Better Get Hit in Your Soul
12 - One Red Rose That I Mean
13 - Journey in Satchidananda
14 - Lights on a Satellite
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Origin: Athens, Georgia, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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