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Chris Whitley
HOTEL VAST HORIZON
BY JONATHAN PERRY

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There’s an eccentric purity to Chris Whitley’s rustic brand of ramshackle folk blues that’s present a both ends of his sonic spectrum, from the scabrous electric clamor of Din of Ecstasy (Columbia) to the barren, nerve-blasted spareness of Dirt Floor (Messenger). In Whitley’s hands, roots music is never trite or easy, and it’s never an excuse for cliché.

So though Hotel Vast Horizon, his first all-acoustic album recorded with a backing band, might be the perfect setting for a warm and twangy alterna-country outing, there’s nothing comforting or straightforward about it. Instead, the album’s a skeletal, drafty beauty, a " lonesome panorama, " to nick a lyric from one of the new songs, " Wide Open Return. " The 10 tracks come across like a dusty series of grainy, sepia-toned portraits: you can hear Whitley’s fingers scrape against the strings of his acoustic guitar, feel the texture of brushes skimming along Matthias Macht’s drums, all of it propped up by the dim, rattling thrum of Heiko Schramm’s acoustic bass. And on top there’s Whitley’s weary, laconic voice, conversational yet never quite content. He seems resigned to the desolation each song evokes. At times the album is too dreary and too lo-fi; the best songs — " Breaking Your Fall, " " Insurrection at Newtown, " the title track — would be better served by a fuller, electric treatment. But this is an artist who rarely plays to easy expectations.

(Chris Whitley performs this Monday, April 7, at the House of Blues in Cambridge; call 617-497-2229.)

Issue Date: April 3 - 10, 2003
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