Mason Lindahl – Kissing Rosy in the Rain
Tompkins Square – 22 January 2021
There is something about the quick decay of plucked nylon guitar strings that gives their sound its own privacy and intimacy that the fire and venom of steel strings cannot imitate. It’s also this lack of a linger from the notes that create a haunted space between each pick that can be quite magical and eerily sparse. For Kissing Rosy in the Rain, Mason Lindahl explores the subtle power of the nylon-strung guitar, along with a selection of amps, mics and a hint of effects to create a rather beautiful album. This is instrumental guitar music working a very different space to the often muscular compositions of American Primitive style picking and, although there are certainly signs of it here, even the more gentle musings of the Windham Hill crowd. There is folk guitar found in places and certainly avant-garde music, classically influenced playing and improvising techniques, but it’s the ratios of these sounds that make Kissing Rosy’s sound unique; the music is both finely nuanced and delicately simple.
The title track is an example of the sound at its most romantic and unfiltered, with light notes suggesting gentler flamenco playing and the subtlest studio brush stroke adding comfort and intimacy to a patiently picked tune. Songs like opener Sky Breaking, Clouds Falling and Deep Wish use lower strings and flurries of picking to create a less optimistic energy, with the latter employing echoing effects to add depth and loneliness to the piece. Outside Laughing uses a sturdy and beautifully played but ominous melody with reverb effects on the guitar to contradict its title and wash us with a sense of menace and unease, while In Lieu slows things even further and focuses on a two chord plucked line, with low organ completing a cyclical lament.
With albums like Kissing Rosy in the Rain and last year’s Hand Like God, it seems that more music from the improvised and loosely structured tributary of solo guitar music is coming into focus. Performers like Tashi Dorji (whose VDSQ album springs to mind on occasion when listening to this one) are gathering more traction and there seems to be increasing time for a more meditative and candid sound. In his press release for this album, Josh Rosenthal talks about music that stays ‘in a zone, not caring about variation for variation’s sake.’ Kissing Rosy has this confidence but is also in many ways a very naked sounding album; although there are effects heard throughout, there is an intimacy to the record that would be compromised by any more filling out of the arrangements. Every note that Mason plays on here counts and can be heard; there is no fat or filler, but instead a quiet strength and boldness to the music that makes it so effective. Kissing Rosy in the Rain is fantastic – Lindahl has explored the limitations and boundaries of instrumental guitar music and created something fresh and vital.
Order Kissing Rosy in the Rain: https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/kissing-rosy-in-the-rain