Eli Winter’s debut album didn’t reveal all his tricks. The Time to Come was a solo acoustic guitar affair, a cathartic release put out while Winter was still in college. The nature of the LP and his references to Jack Rose and Daniel Bachman suggested he was heading down one path. Still, he was simultaneously thinking through the work of artists like Judee Sill and Pauline Oliveros.
That first album from the self-taught guitarist was a creative success, but it didn’t fully reveal the diversity of sounds that Winter would begin to draw on as his connections grew and his aesthetic expanded (it was almost surprising when he had – gasp! – bandmates). With A Trick of the Light, Winter might not be pulling back the curtain on everything, but he presents a more complete picture of the diversity of his art.
The opening track alone makes a statement. Winter and his band rework Don Cherry‘s “Arabian Nightingale”, expanding the piece to over 16 minutes. Gerritt Hatcher’s tenor saxophone comfortably puts the recording in the realm of jazz, a genre Winter dabbled in but rarely fully committed to. At the same time, he shifts the track around so much that it begins to become something else, the sort of indefinable music that Winter constantly strives for.
His electric guitar turns dark; those bright, youthful tones of just a few years ago are less well suited to this sort of exploration. Regular collaborator Sam Wagstaff adds subtle pedal steel that gives the song its own atmosphere. When Tyler Damon’s drums pick up in the final minutes, it’s hard to decide if the group is heading for jazz, world, or alternative country. Then the band suddenly cut off.
Like much of the album, it is wandering, an investigative mix of composition and improvisation. Winter, Wagstaff, and Damon have the time together to make that work easily, and the other musicians join in as they travel. “For a Fallen Rocket” sounds like a slightly avant version of the American West, its energetic but elegiac tone possibly connected to the loss of Winter’s friend Jaimie Branch (Winter’s mentioned “reckoning” with some difficult times, including Branch’s death, during the creation of this record).
Then “Cracking the Jaw” turns into a sort of rocker (with pedal steel). If “Rocket” is wonder in a sweeping Texas night, “Cracking the Jaw” is working through the frustration of nightfall. Fittingly (somehow), Winter covers Carla Bley with “Ida Lupino”, and his group sound nearly tropical in their approach to this jazz cut. In four songs, the ensemble encompass at least four moods and probably more genres, yet perform with a coherent sensibility.
The title track brings in bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen) and guitarist David Grubbs (Squirrel Bait, Gastr del Sol) for a patient meditation, the most brooding track on the album. Closing number “Black Iris on a Burning Quilt” lets the band stretch out again, Winter’s riff giving way to expressive moments. The cut offers hopefulness of a kind after the edge of its predecessors, but while it’s relatively buoyant, it’s far from celebratory. It’s shifty, ultimately settling for something more akin to peace than joy, but effectively completing the arc started with “Nightingale”.
Eli Winter has been demonstrating for several years now that there’s more to him than it initially seemed (not that there were early complaints), and with Trick, he brings even more of his art into the light.
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