Where JON GOMM's debut album thrillingly demonstrated a confident grasp of post-Michael Hedges guitar and reflected his entertaining live show, 2009's "Don't Panic" is a deeply satisfying musical experience in its own right.
With its fifty minutes of solo acoustic guitar, Jon's rich voice, strong songs and only one additional vocalist (Natasha Koczy) on one track, this album is a musical achievement of lasting value.
The wonderful opening track, "Waterfall", evokes the complex rhythms and conversational interplays of sitar and tabla that I remember from concerts given by Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha in the 1960s, a long way on from simple imitation of the surface characteristics of classical raga. Playing percussion, drone and melodic lines simultaneously on one instrument (while singing in Urdu) Gomm seems to fully enter the spirit of the natural power and unrelenting spirit of the waterfall. A listener is drawn to the music. The virtuosity is just the medium that channels the spiritually rich communication.
"Afterglow" has a jazz flow, with a funky back beat and a dirty blues feel. Guitar touches are big, reverbed and bruising. Then sensitive by turn. Brushed percussion makes an appearance (it's a heel of the right hand rubbing the shockingly worn soundboard of Gomm's guitar) and so too some adroit combinations of deep walking bass and fluidly finger picked (and tapped?) high notes. It's lustful and very absorbing.
"Temporary" explores guitar possibilities in the spirit of Davy Graham, with close attention to where the resonances and shifts of tone lead - mellow, harsh, sharp and blurred being chosen and explored in turn. But it also has a fine tune of its own, with a lyric to engage the emotions of anyone but the soulless.
"Gloria", splendidly profane and ungainly with self-conscious memories of adolescent sexuality is a performance favourite. I defy anyone beyond the age range of the subject not to hear it without a lump in the throat, a nostalgic tear on the cheek and a laugh of recognition. The great tune, the clumsy lyrics and the emotional bravado of the tumescent guitar climax are just perfect. Anyone who called it "gauche" would be classifiable as way behind the pace.
"Topeka" is guitar study in simultaneity and surging flights of melodic energy. Everything happens at once. The guitar rings with splayed fingered chords and sweet clear runs of steel purity. No gaps, no joins, no uncertainties. At a live gig Gomm has described the song as being "about things you can't express in words". Just so.
"Loveproof" shifts slowly and lets big lower strings resonate for a long time, under a romantic tune and a song that plays the "I'm not in Love" game to good effect. The gently complex delicacy of Gomm's touches on the strings are lustrous and sensuous, pushing in sympathy with the subtlety of more guitar body percussion (itself rich in variations of tone and dynamics)
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"Surrender" is an up-tempo blues riff and a funky bass line with a truck driving beat that keeps roaring up from behind and spraying gravel as it passes. Vocal histrionics and melodic adjustment keep it exciting.
"Rescue Song" is a full-on love song with intense Flamenco arpeggios and Gomm's voice in a higher, lighter register, in direct contrast with the massive scale of the darkness of following track "Weather Machine". This has Flamenco elements too, but it feels more like rock and roll of a Ritchie Havens kind. Body and guitar sway and the lyrics race by, thrummed into a hypnotic frenzy. There's a kind of drum solo in there too, somewhere between a beat boxer and jazz, with fistfuls of staccato guitar notes that mimic rain, sleet and electrical storms.
"Wake Up" explores the guitar in a beguiling series of variations on an intriguing line. He uses a pitch change from the tuning pegs that will confuse your ear, and ends in a rush of chords and beats.
The five minutes of "What's Left?" bring Natasha Koczy into the closing duet. Fluttering guitar takes on new tones and the voices fly up and around each other in sudden bursts. "If music's for dancing, magic's for the spellbound and love is for lovers, what's left for you?"
YouTube shows us that there is no shortage of youngsters who can pull off passable imitations of some passages from Michael Hedges or Roy Harper or Jeff Buckley - or whoever tickles your guitar palette. It takes a pioneer like JON GOMM to use (and show off) extraordinary virtuosity that has absorbed and gone beyond those others. In the service of an original and musically satisfying journey, JON GOMM offers his a unique contribution to acoustic guitar music.
www.jongomm.com
www.myspace.com/jongomm
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