Back in March, Cameron Knowler teamed up with Eli Winter to release ‘Anticipation‘, a meeting ground for their disparate approaches which proved to be a playful delight. While we had some familiarity with Eli Winter, having reviewed his 2019 debut and his 2020 follow-up ‘Unbecoming’, the results of this union were far from predictable. It was also a great introduction to Cameron Knowler who seemed equally happy to explore and push those boundaries as much as Winter. How far, we will soon find out as he has just announced his debut album Places of Consequence which will be released July 16, 2021, via American Dreams, the same label that release ‘Anticipation’.
The announcement coincided with the release of his single and Laura Lee Blackburn-directed music video “Puerto Suelo”, a song about falling in love with something bigger than yourself. Featuring guitar and banjo, it lives up to its cinematic promise, being an original composition meant to straddle the divide between a pastoral guitar arrangement in the vein of George Cromarty and a western noir soundscape, something Laura Lee Blackburn’s video plays on. By mid-point, Knowler finds time to experiment, throwing in occasional kitchen utensil percussion that lends an almost freeform interlude to proceedings, accentuated by the handheld night footage.
According to the accompanying album press, the track was recorded with a pair of specific guitars in mind: a 1939 Supertone all-birch parlor guitar and a late ’60s Teisco “tulip” model, each panned 30% on either side. As opposed to playing discernable lead and rhythm parts, each guitar mimics the other, creating a charged, heterophonic dialogue. Consistent with this mode of experimentalism, the use of kitchen utensils and banjo percussion are employed to punctuate the song’s narrative departures and returns.
It’s a gem…that’s what it is. Along with the likes of Winter and Yasmin Williams, there’s some amazing young talent coming to the acoustic scene right now, it’s never been so rich and vibrant and the willingness of these artists to experiment makes them so beautifully unpredictable and real.
Puerto Suelo is also our Song of the Day.
Places of Consequence Out July 16 via American Dreams
Pre-Order it here: https://cameronknowler.bandcamp.com/album/places-of-consequence
Photo Credit: Laura Lee Blackburn