Brightblack Morning Light

New Mexico's Brightblack Morning Light, fronted by Alabama-raised guitarist/vocalist Nathan Shineywater, debuted with the hazy slo-core excursions of Ala.Cali.Tucky (Galaxia, 2004).

Brightblack Morning Light (Matador, 2006) unfolds a psychomusical journey not unlike the ones attemped by avantgarde trumpeter Jon Hassell: the sound evokes places and ages without quoting any particular style, but achieves a level of magic realism that is even more powerful than pure realism.
The slow-motion swamp-rock of Everybody Daylight (enhanced with jazzy flute and funky backbeat) coins a form of easy-listening psychedelic music that is fluent in both the Cowboy Junkies and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Another six-minute shuffle, Friend of Time, couples a heavier funk-jazz accent with pre-blues chanting and a mournful trombone solo.
These two early tracks pretty much exhaust the repertory of techniques that the album employs. The funky beat picks up speed during the ten-minute Star Blanket River Child, a piece that ends with a lengthy jamming section. The psychedelic element prevails in the dilated blues All We Have Broken Shines, that boasts what is perhaps the best amalgam of blues, jazz, funk and Caribbean jamming of the album. The dreamy quality is best appreciated in the lulling lullaby A River Could Be Loved, accompanied only by piano and organ. The blues permeates the somnolent drift of Black Feather Wishes Rise.
Each and every song is mainly a work of hypnosis, but the strongest effect is achieved by the one song that breaks the pattern. Syncopated polyrhythms contrast with a ghostly, fragile whisper in Amber Canyon Magik, evoking much more than a landscape or a mood or a lifestyle. This is as close as Shineywater gets to a shamanic experience.

Motion To Rejoin (2008) was a vastly inferior work: repetitive, monotonous, uninspired. The lengthy Gathered Years, Another Reclaimation and A Rainbow Aims are wasted opportunities.