Marisa Anderson — Mercury

Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson plays a nostalgic style of Western blues guitar.  "Mercury" came in 2013, the 3rd album since 2005, a solo guitar album.  She the release of this has since recorded three other album.

She plays a lightly distorted electric guitar for much of this album, but her technique suggests a banjo, cycling in a tight ostinato through the successive strings.  Much of her music is comprised of gently arpeggiating chords, cascading scalar stairsteps falling in sketched melodies.  She plays with a slide a lot of the time, as well, bringing a rustic country feel.  Her timings and note choices are loose, her tempos elastic.  Her pieces may be largely improvisation.

The sound speaks to countless hiking and road trips, hours spent staring into the trees and open country.  It is music out of history, an anachronism to the current time and its technologies, with the solitary patience of hermetic life.  This album would make the perfect soundtrack to a documentary about the Gold Rush.

Anderson's melodies are warm, unforced and emotionally rewarding.  Her style is deep and diverse enough to easily keep my attention through the entirety of the sixteen song, thirty minute record.  With a high density of ideas within the 1-3 minute songs, she tells you the chronicle of her days, thankfully spent in contemplation of nature.  It is an album that conjures the past without feeling like tired retread, instead returning all the depth of that world to us.