Bill MacKay & Nathan Bowles – Keys (2021)    


Review:
Anybody who has kept in touch with the movements of Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s prolific single releases of late or checked out Bill Mackay‘s discography will know that Drag City love putting out a collaboration record, but this one, in particular, had our interest piqued from the off. Bill Mackay’s’s guitar playing is an eclectic mix of avant-garde, jazz, folk and beyond, while Nathan’s percussive banjo playing developed in the Black Twig Pickers, where he took it on alongside his percussion duties and began to explore his own style of droned claw hammer playing. For Keys, the pair have veered towards bluegrass, folk and roots sounds, putting together a glorious set of instrumentals and sang numbers. Opener Idumea is a hymn harking back to the eighteenth century, here treated with space and played slowly and almost tentatively, with each player giving the other room to add phrases and notes where needed, resulting in a piece where nothing is spare. Honey Time is far more upbeat and sounds like Mackay’s work with Ryley Walker, particularly on their Spiderbeetlebee album. On songs like this one and Joy Ride, the pair really hit their groove, with killer melodies and their intuitive and generous playing working absolutely beautifully. More disparate are tracks like both parts of Dry Rations, evenly dispersed on each side of the record. These less immediate songs are particularly rewarding and resonate in a similar way to I Miss my Dog (a tune I seem to mention a lot) from Nathan’s Whole & Cloven album or Umbra from Plainly Mistaken. Perhaps even better is Dowsing, another piece happy to roam rather than stick to its melody. The pair do this type of music so well, seemingly happy in each other’s company and content to let the tune run a natural course. Hearing Nathan provide a bedrock refrain towards the end of the song while Bill plays around with some tremolo or slide guitar is an especially high point on the album. The vocal songs are charming, with the singing reticent and pure. Bill’s voice is gentle and has echoes of Nick Drake on Truth and a sorrowful warmth on Late for your Funeral Again, but the most successful of the three sang pieces is a version of E. C. and Orna Ball’s I See God. Here the pair’s voices meld wonderfully and the accompanying tune is a peach. It’s all done in two and a half minutes, but this is a rich number that deserves its place with Joy Ride, making up the core of the album, sandwiched by the two ace little Dry Rations tunes. Thanks very much guys; Keys was one we were excited about and it delivers at every turn. A modest album without doubt; there is no superfluous music here and the songs either written or unearthed are beautifully humble and honest while maintaining integrity and interest. — by Glenn Kimpton / folkradio.co.uk


   


Track List:
01 - Idumea
02 - Honey Time
03 - Late for Your Funeral Again
04 - Dry Rations II
05 - Joyride
06 - I See God
07 - Dry Rations I
08 - Dowsing
09 - Truth
10 - The i in Silence


Media Report:
Genre: folk
Country: MacKay (Chicago, Illinois, USA) / Bowles (Durham, North Carolina, USA)
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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