Michael Chapman
Album: Fish
Label: Tompkins Square
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.michaelchapman.co.uk

Though fast approaching his three-quarter-century (that'll be next January), ace guitar-picker and songwriter Michael Chapman shows no sign of letting up, and his latest (looking at my shelves, I'd say well-past-40th) album, an all-instrumental record made (like 2010's Trainsong) for well-regarded American independent label Tompkins Square, brings another slant to the time-honoured "solo guitar extravaganza" billing.

Well, perhaps "extravaganza" is the wrong word for this unassumingly accomplished demonstration of the man's inventiveness on the humble guitar, concentrating less on pure technique-driven musical creations and more on the generation of mood, atmosphere and light and shade through simple means. This means a typically down-home honesty of expression, which is nowhere better illustrated than on Fish's opening cut, brilliantly aptly titled Plain Old Bob Has A Hoedown, which takes the quasi-Fahey line on lazy Americana, alternating rollin' fingerpicked progressions with slide phrases and bolstered by an insistent if gentle percussive stomp rhythm. Its genial shuffle brings in improvised modal delights along the way before it kinda runs out of steam (or track) after around six minutes, but the composition's air of easy familiarity proves a good way for the album to settle in. The platform-bell tolls to herald arrival at the next station along the line, Lament For Nepal, a delicately configured, oriental-paced processional.

During the course of the ensuing journey through the landscape of guitar, Michael guides us unerringly past its landmarks, and on the way pays a brief, nostalgic return visit to the Wrytree Drift mine. This Reminds Me Of You might be thought to have lyrical overtones of a romantic song gesture (I thought of Ewan MacColl's First Time Ever I Saw Your Face at one point), concluding in a beautiful passage of keenly configured harmonics, while fondness of two kinds (literal affection and fondness for experimental sounds) characterises Stockport Sunday, Michael's homage to Tom Rush's classic Rockport Sunday, whose melancholy ambience is accentuated by what sounds like a cello to amplify the restless strumming of the melodic recollections. Jack, which follows, ushers in a sunnier climate, but this is then darkened by Vanity And Pride, its syncopations strangely calling to mind a gospel hymn, which ushers in the Biblical-themed Ehud (yes, I had to look that one up too!), a rather gloomy but masterful sermon with something of a ballad-like feel. We then step out for some fresh air into the March Rain (another plainly nostalgic revisit), before re-boarding the train (and the river?) to Nepal for the skipping momentum of a measured rambling trek that is Nima Lama.

The album's title Fish may be a private joke, or just a deliberate enigma, but the intelligent sequencing of the disc proves that there's no cause to get bored with an all-instrumental album. Hats off to Chapman!

David Kidman