You don’t expect Chuck Roth’s music to have lyrics. The Brooklyn-based guitarist’s experimental style and broad range of techniques, especially on his latest album Texture Songs, occupy plenty of speaker space, even when the music is spacious and minimalist, so the introduction of softly sung words is surprising. Take the gnarly shards of Hometown Hero, a piece built on observations of a changing New York City, changes clearly not all welcomed. The playing is sharp and muscular in places, with heavy strums and mini high-string flexes that bring plenty of urgency. The vocals add something of a pulse, a beating heart to the sound, without demanding too much attention.
Roth has an interesting view of vocals, looking to use them to ‘decorate the border of a song’s emotion without dictating it.’ This approach is even more successfully realised here than on Roth’s Palilalia debut, last year’s excellent watergh0st songs, a set with a slightly more conventional song structure. The vocal as decoration is clearly achieved on Hometown Hero and also on songs like the brilliantly quirky Love Song, a piece constructed around modified guitar, with Chuck’s voice bending in sympathy with an odd tuning and weird, elastic notes. The effect is an egalitarian piece, with the guitar and voice coexisting comfortably.
Another highlight is Gun, with a luminous, pulsing guitar part that shifts into a more anxious, twitchy pattern a minute or so in, when the tune becomes fiddlier. Chuck’s voice, each time drifting into a whisper, evokes a feeling of reluctance, with an image of fingers twisting hair. This is such clever music, confidently played and seamless in its structure. The heavy breath and repeated ‘gun gun gun’ toward the end is particularly powerful in its defeatist delivery.
Also occupying the heavier end is Siren, a song built around a deep, chunky, repeated guitar part on the lower strings that slips into a higher, more brittle piece of music when matching Chuck’s wide-eyed vocal. A song of shifting character, the guitar work here is fascinating, with the notes switching from leaden to aluminium and back again throughout. This is intricate, meticulous music from a truly adventurous spirit with an already clear idea of what that Stratocaster is capable of.
Texture Songs is a highly accomplished album; it expertly blends experimental guitar playing Derek Bailey would be proud of with lyrics and singing that feel intrinsic and organic to the sound. It’s an impressive balance indeed, but one that comes across as effortless from this exciting, singular musician. Bravo.
Texture Songs (October 30th, 2026) Palilalia (PAL–98)
Chuck Roth will perform at Le Guess Who festival in Utrecht on November 7th.