Bill Frisell's new album, Disfarmer, which sets to music the haunting, mid-century photo portraits of the late Arkansas photographer Michael Disfarmer, is "extraordinary" and "an absolutely beguiling listen," says the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The effect is like sifting through old photographs with black-and-white imagery that convey all manner of figurative color upon each viewing." 100 Greatest Jazz Albums calls the album "evocative in terms that are all its own ... an outstanding further chapter in Bill Frisell's growth as a major American artist in his own right."
Bill Frisell's new album, Disfarmer, which sets to music the haunting, mid-century black-and-white photo portraits of the late Arkansas photographer Michael Disfarmer, is "extraordinary" and "an absolutely beguiling listen," says music writer Walter Tunis in his review for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Tunis writes of Frisell:
His spacious playing matches the wiry, emotive and, at times, very animated tone of compositions—and well-chosen covers—that employ backdrops of steel guitar, fiddle and acoustic bass. The effect is like sifting through old photographs with black-and-white imagery that convey all manner of figurative color upon each viewing.
The latter comparison is particularly apt on this, his latest Nonesuch release, and its subject, Disfarmer, the curmudgeonly creator of powerful photographs of his rural Arkansan neighbors in the 1940s and '50s. Even given this source of inspiration, "Frisell's wondrous music," says Tunis, "more than stands on its own."
The review concludes by describing Frisell as "the most startling and original Americana-inclined guitarist since Ry Cooder."
Read the complete review at kentucky.com.
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The Belfast Telegraph seizes on the photographic source material as well in its review, stating: "In some ways these old country blues tunes are the musical equivalent of Disfarmer's portraits: works which began life as poor vernacular that over time have been elevated to classic, near mystical levels." Read more at belfasttelegraph.co.uk.
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The website 100 Greatest Jazz Albums, in an effort to better understand the guitarist-composer behind Disfarmer, suggests that if one were to make an amalgam of "Charles Ives, Woody Guthrie, Hank Wiliams and John Fahey and refract it through the lens of a genius like Miles Davis you might end up with the increasingly individualistic music of Bill Frisell."
In its review of Disfarmer, the site, too, recognizes the power of both the photographic inspiration and the stand-alone music Frisell has created from it. "There is a real intensity and strange beauty to this music ... evocative in terms that are all its own," says the reviewer, who concludes: "Disfarmer is an outstanding further chapter in Bill Frisell's growth as a major American artist in his own right."
Read the review at 100greatestjazzalbums.blogspot.com.
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