Carson McHone Pentimento

Ll of the songs of Pentimento began as poems against the backdrop of global crisis, national borders, civil unrest, birth, death, bad love, new love, true love. They were written in the desert during spring and summer. There, history and time are visual in the drama of great boulders, in layers on a rockface-the potential and past energy of the ancient sea-floor. Some of these lyrics were written on postcards and in letters. Others began as embellishments on watercolor paintings, or captions for a photograph in a diary, or were written as responses in the margins of a journal to a child, newborn, from a generation past. These "artifacts" from writing/living informed what would eventually become material for this record. Later, beside the ocean, and during the first snow of the season, a special group of musicians gathered to bring the album to life. While half of the songs were built into place according to a rigorous "plan," the other half came together for the first time on this very occasion and were learned and performed live on the spot. Over six days, all of it was captured on an 8-track cassette tape recorder, including fortuitous feedback bass drone, and spontaneous laughter. -Carson McHone * The first notes of Pentimento are birdsong, and with it in the distance, Carson McHone reads from an 1840 letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller: "Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods." One of the birds whistles a distinct three-note tune. McHone whistles it back. A piano takes up the line, and the song "Winter Breaking" blooms into being. In the study of physical art, the pentimento is an artifact, a remnant of a previous draft or altogether different painting that's apparent beneath layers of paint on a finished canvas. Within seconds of Pentimento, one hears how the album organizes itself around this idea: "Winter Breaking" is an astonishing piece of songwriting, a meticulously crafted guitar-pop jewel that finds McHone at the peak of her powers as a bandleader and a lyricist. The first 30 seconds contain the pentimenti, the earlier sounds, spaces, and materials that became this sound. The effect is staggering; even for McHone, whose output to this point has seen her channel seemingly disparate influences into a unique, alluring sonic signature, Pentimento marks a radical expansion of the scale of her ambitions. The "all of it" present here is not just the album, but context. The 185 years between McHone and Emerson. Two seasons in the desert. Six days spent oceanside with friends. The eternity between us and the first notes of birdsong. Thrillingly alive in the music are exquisite articulations of pastoral folk with snatches of spoken word or a choice instrument that casts a song in elegiac light. Occasional riffs that call back to her roots in Texas build towards moments of organic and tactile rock, with tambourines and claps, homemade instruments, and layered acoustics. The record is an anchor in the ceaseless flow of time, a home amidst the tumult of the moment we find ourselves in now-love and beauty in the presence of brutality. Pentimento is an audacious and rewarding record. It is also a reckoning: How can love and beauty exist in the presence of brutality? Disquietingly. Dissonantly. Against it's shadow and bearing it's mark. This is what McHone and her collaborators capture on Pentimento with the subtlety of watercolor painting and the richness of verse, in ghost vocals and child voices alike. Every layer is a universe unto itself, revealing the pulse that animates Carson McHone's creative drive. Arranged here and expressed as a whole, it constitutes a masterpiece.