Barry Walker Jr. – Shoulda Zenith LP

Description

The sky goes on forever in Barry Walker Jr.s Shoulda Zenith, and its crackling with unexpected lightning. The Tennessee-bred, Portland-based pedal steel master subverts his instruments tradition for lachrymose, innocuous Rootzak. Instead, he ventures to outward-bound strata more frequently traversed by Sonny Sharrock than Gram Parsons. So often, the pedal steel is used as a textural flavor, Walker says, but it really can breathe fire itself. Evidence for that claim abounds on Shoulda Zenith. Sprouting out of the strategies Walker used on his 2012 LP of Henry Flynt and Paul Metzger-like fiddle aberrations, Banjo Knife, the music on Zenith goes on similar extravagant tangentsbut with pedal steel.Assisted here and there by bassist Scott Derr and drummer Dana Valatka, and others, Walker has synthesized his love for country, New Age, freeform freakouts, and ecstatic music on Zenith. One can hear traces of the laid-back sinuousness of Texas psych-rockers Cold Sun, Fushitsushas craggy, acid-rock excoriations, and Doug Sahms sprightly melodic sweetness. One may notice Insect Interlude adding new colors to Terry Rileys Rainbow In Curved Air and Up The Fan, Into The Keyhole taking Sharrocks Black Woman to Appalachia. Tilt the head just right and Shoulda Zenith and Trinity Payload may be the most psychedelic things a pandemic-besieged mind will encounter in 2020. Cosmic country didnt know it needed its own Inventions For Electric Guitar, but now that its arrived, the Gilded Palace Of Sin is starting to seem like a dilapidated bungalow.

Shoulda Zenith by Barry Walker Jr.