Chris Brokaw
(Capitan)
Chris Brokaw is a busy guy, just in the last year or so backing Thurston Moore and Two-Dollar Guitar, venturing into Americana with Chris Eckman and Hugo Race in Dirt Music, and drumming for indie heavyweights the New Year. Lucky for us, he somehow made time for the all-guitar #Canaris#, a brief but wonderful exploration of the acoustic and electric, blues-traditional and experimental byways he and his guitar have traveled.
Much of the EP has the scratchy percussive charm you might recall from Brokaw's Incredible Love, the bookending "Exemptive/Exempting" tracks arguing for serenity, while "Watching the Clouds" cuts porch blues with a rock-leaning urgency. Brokaw also shows off collector-ish expertise by covering the hard-to-find "Drink the Poetry of Celtic Disciple" off French metal band Vlad Tepes' unreleased second CD. The disc's centerpiece, however, is its only plugged-in cut, the 17- minute, drone-and-feedback inflected title track, where Brokaw does battle with tone and dissonance and murky dreamlike atmospherics. Nicely done, Chris, now back to work.
Standout Tracks: "Canaris" "Drink the Poetry of Celtic Disciple" JENNIFER KELLY
