Humankind cannot live by rock alone. Thus Barry Walker Jr., a geologist and teacher with a Nashville past and a Portland, Ore., present, plays a whole lot of music. Much of it, in his various guises as a solo artist, sideman and member of Mouth Painter and North Americans, is fairly local stuff. But the pedal-steel guitarist’s membership in Rose City Band has gotten him out on the road where the rest of the USA can see him, and it now seems to have provided him with an opportunity to release this all-instrumental effort on Thrill Jockey, RCB’s label.
Walker’s day job deals with the soil, and there are hints of his vocation on a title like “Son, Don’t Brighten The Bear Creek Rhyolite,” which namechecks a variety of lava rock. But the music is more likely to make you think of the varied ways that people get close. The tune’s opening melody has a beseeching, vocal quality; bassist Jason Willmon and drummer Rob Smith shadow the steel’s progress with gently supportive empathy.
Elsewhere, Paleo Sol invites listeners to cast their eyes sunward—or at least toward the clouds. The gentle unfurling of Walker’s shimmering tones over a low pedal tone and billowing cymbals on the album’s opening track, “Quiessence,” evokes cirrus-washed vistas. And the celestial and the tectonic come together on “Sentient Lithosphere,” which may be named after the earth’s outer crust, but whose loops and echoes are as plush and fluffy as cumulus clouds viewed from above from your window seat on a plane. [Thrill Jockey]
—Bill Meyer
