(2021) Ryan Dugré - Three Rivers


Review:
A paradox lies at the heart of Three Rivers, the new album by Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer Ryan Dugré. The seeds of these 12 instrumentals were sown during a song-a-day compositional exercise that Dugré undertook back in January 2019, yet the resulting music sounds anything but created under duress. Warm waves of carefully articulated guitar trace elegant shapes, set within restrained arrangements for strings, brass, percussion, pedal steel, piano and synth that accent the underlying melodic ideas. Dugré’s playing is excellent throughout, subtly shifting his tonal palette between songs in order to suit each musical scene. “Living Language” opens the album with chiming 12-string acoustic, backed by a melancholy string arrangement that brings to mind Robert Kirby’s work with Nick Drake. On “Powder Rains” he switches to the woody timbre of a nylon-string classical guitar, doubling the lines on muted electric guitar, patiently mapping out the song’s intricate terrain. The electric guitar playing on “Wing” is reminiscent of the mercurial Ben Monder, tracing inquisitive arcs that are soon joined by blooming pedal steel and percussive crashes. The down-tuned acoustic guitar of “Lumima” stalks the lower registers while bluesy pedal steel slowly glides around the song’s perimeter. Though Three Rivers’ material is consistently strong, two of the record’s finest moments are situated midway through the album, signalling a shift into more tense, cinematic territory. An eerie guitar line winds its way through the shadily atmospheric “Stalking Horse,” the melody of which is then echoed on the piano of the following piece, “Shining,” co-written by Will Graefe. At five minutes, “Shining” is longer than many of the other pieces here and features a glowing electric guitar melody and brooding string arrangement that brings the piece to an uneasy climax. Overall, Three Rivers is an expansive and reflective listening experience that belies the urgency of its initial creative impulse. It’s fitting that it ends with perhaps its two least eventful pieces, “In the Silence” and “Glace Bay.” Largely unaccompanied, save for a smattering of pedal steel and synth, these two succinct songs bring the listener’s mind back to Three Rivers’ inception: Dugré alone at his guitar, feeling his way towards fresh creative directions.





Tracklist:
01 - Living Language
02 - Old Hotel
03 - Powder Rains
04 - Foxglove
05 - Stalking Horse
06 - Shining
07 - Big Pictures, Wide Open Spaces
08 - Other Minds
09 - Wing
10 - Lumima
11 - In the Silence
12 - Glace Bay


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits