Wendy Eisenberg – ViewfinderAmerican Dreams
In the liner notes to Viewfinder, Wendy Eisenberg talks about how getting Lasik surgery changed the guitarist’s relationship to the visual world. Does clearer vision lead to greater understanding? Or does knowledge reside in a blur? Eisenberg attempts to answer—or at least contemplate—such questions with a sprawling double album consisting of both free-form vocal outings and long instrumental improvisations.
Better known as part of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet or as singer/guitarist for the noise-pop trio Editrix, Eisenberg taps into a looser and more contemplative mode as a leader, blending fluid vocal melodies, textural rhythms, and nimble tempo changes into an unruly whole.
Singing in a plainspoken, vaguely incantatory style that splits the difference between Editrix’s ’90s-influenced work and a more chill Meredith Monk, Eisenberg sounds both thoughtful and stunned, with the music following suit. It’s a surprisingly non-guitar-forward record: “Two Times Water” relies on bass, piano, and trumpet to build a dense, introspective groove, while “HM” consists of elongated, repetitive lines, often played on only one or two strings, mirrored by the trumpet.
It would be trite to call an album about eyesight “unfocused,” but Viewfinder does have a diffuse, unsteady feel, especially on instrumental tracks like “After Image,” which clocks in at 22 minutes and mostly spotlights Chris Williams’ trumpet and Zekereyya el-Magharbel’s trombone. On “Set a Course,” which begins as a rueful lullaby but soon transitions into a winding, gently gnarly guitar/electronics/trumpet excursion in free time, Eisenberg captures the paradoxical feeling of being both newly motivated and completely adrift.
“Set a course out past what I’m told is abstraction / Find no other world can touch me,” Eisenberg sings, soon followed by “I can’t see myself any clearer.” Viewfinder might not have any hard answers, but it does find a kind of ambiguous truth that lies beyond the perceptible. As observed on “Lasik”: “If this wasn’t true, it’d be the most heavy-handed metaphor / But yes, I changed my eyesight, and yes, my eyes are blurry.”
Sometimes clarity requires a plunge into the indefinite. Eisenberg has jumped in with both eyes wide open. – GRADE: B
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