The Thicket

His first album after the end of Gastr del Sol, his duo with Jim O’Rourke, The Thicket has David Grubbs folding together much of what he’d been doing over the preceding few years — abstract pop; droning minimalism; reflective piano studies; lyrics that edge close to experimental poetics. The tensions between lyric and melody suggest he’s learned ‘forced cohesion’ from his time with The Red Krayola, too, but here it’s easier, less breathless, and one of Grubbs’s skills is stealthily smuggling the avant-garde into folk-inflected non-pop songs. That folksiness comes mostly from the sound of the tenor banjo, which he plays beautifully, as skewed and idiosyncratic as his guitar and piano voicings. Tony Conrad turns up on ragged, lush violin drones, and John McEntire’s percussion is a sturdy yet shape-shifting presence. A most beautiful collection of thoughts.