Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death

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James Blackshaw’s 2012 album was named after James Tiptree Jr.’s 1973 short story, written from the perspective of a giant spider at odds with his violent instincts. Though Blackshaw’s music is synonymous with his profound dexterity on an acoustic 12-string, here he opts for the six-string nylon guitar. As immediately heard in the opening title track, Blackshaw’s nimble arpeggios now sound earthier. Where his past recordings with the 12-string created a mantra of otherworldly transcendence, the more natural resonance of his nylon six-string creates unrefined intonations rooted in Spanish tones. Blackshaw isn’t deliberately approximating any specific Latin styles in his playing. But even in the Ben Chasny–style “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” or the Takoma school–influenced “A Momentary Taste of Being,” it’s difficult to disassociate his recordings from all things Spanish, since he’s playing a Spanish guitar. This album also proves to be his first working with a singing lyricist. Geneviève Beaulieu of the folk-drone project Preterite and the black metal band Menace Ruine sings like Lisa Gerrard in the wintry “And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways.”

via Apple Music