Glenn Kimpton is a guitarist capable of creating uncommonly varied moods. His acoustic instrumentals, in the style of American primitivism, can conjure up landscapes or pin down complex feelings with subtlety and grace. As Small Show’s title suggests, it is a release that focuses on the minutiae. Where recent albums like 2023’s Ruminate! tended towards the expansive – even the ambient – Small Show is a meditation on simplicity: the joy of a simple melody, a simple idea captured and tended lovingly until it develops its own beauty. It also has a distinctly more urban outlook than Ruminate!
Like much of Kimpton’s work, Small Show was inspired by the outdoors, specifically the city streets of Berlin. He visited the German capital during a spell of hot weather last summer, and the warmth of the streets is echoed in the slow, almost sultry way his melodies develop. But his art is also aware of the less attractive parts of city life. Opening track Nail Catch is scratchy and discordant, a short attention-grabber before he settles into his more familiar role as fingerpicker extraordinaire. Basic Lament is, as its title suggests, a slow and apparently uncomplicated tune, but Kimpton teases out hidden complexities. It may be sweet and gentle, but it is always on the move, always interesting. There is a hint of melancholy, the promise of a light-dappled street in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.
Despite consisting of only four tracks that run to a total of just over a quarter of an hour, Small Show feels like a complete musical document, almost more like an album than an EP. Much of this is down to the way Kimpton can develop a mood over a short space of time, and many of these developments occur in the title track, which takes up more than half of the running time. Here, the guitar melody unfolds slowly at first as Kimpton seems to try out ideas on the fly. Then it becomes more confident, more exploratory, and more prone to an occasional flourish of sweet, chiming notes. Quicker passages creep in, but only for a few seconds at a time. The overall mood is bright and emergent, laced with a quiet joy.
Final track Miss Those Headaches continues the combination of gentle build and bright flourish, before finishing on a stranger note, the melody stretching out and becoming more impressionistic as Kimpton scrapes unfamiliar sounds from his strings. This ability to slip unseen from folky pastoralism to improvised experimentation puts him at the forefront of the current group of British acoustic guitarists taking their inspiration from foundational American exponents like Robbie Basho and John Fahey. He is in good company with those names, and he doesn’t seem out of place. Small Show is assured and highly rewarding.
Played on a Sigma 00r-28vs and a ‘47 Martin 0-17T tenor in C tunings.
Recorded at home, August ‘25. Mastered by Nick Jonah Davis.
Small Show (September 3rd, 2025) Self Released
Bandcamp: https://glennkimpton.bandcamp.com/album/small-show