Paul Duncan comes across as a mysterious person. The front cover for Above The Trees is a dark and distant shot of a deer through the woodland. You could easily imagine a rifle site pointing at the fluffy, Bambi like character on the cover. And yet there’s something about it that reflects the music contained on the shiny disk within. This maybe Duncan’s third album, but he sees him finally hit his stride and fully realise the songs and sounds that have been buried in his head till now.

Featuring a plethora of guests from Gizzly Bear’s Christopher Bear to Doug McCombs from Tortoise and Brokeback, this is a record full of traditional instruments and songs but with one eye firmly trained on the future. The music feels like it was created in the Rocky Mountains, it feels rural and open and the acres of pedal steel, banjo and acoustic guitars suggest it was made for listening to in the great outdoors. The opening acoustic guitars of Red Eagle, joined by pedal steel, open up and reveal a gently driven song that’s greeted by Duncan’s haunting vocals. The Lake Pt 2 is a pure slice of Americana, the pedal steel once again achingly beautiful and layered over the acoustic guitars. Duncan’s vocals and lyrics perfectly telling a tale of love and remembrance whilst on the shores of some giant lake. Parasail shifts the perspective slightly. The hazy guitars with hints of whispering feedback create an ethereal and mystical space whilst the vocals quiver and quake. This slowly reaches a crescendo of thrashing guitars, hints of electronica clipping in the background, before it quietly returns to it’s gently underpinnings. It sounds like something that would easily of fitted onto Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born. High In The Morning proves that he doesn’t just do quiet and slow, it’s an out and out Country-rocker with violins, clattering drums and a jangly guitars. This guy is no one-trick pony.

This record is mainly a traditional Americana record – the huge swathes of pedal steel and acoustic guitars see to that, but there’s suggestions in certain songs that Duncan is looking to breakout from this. He’s certainly got the basics right, he’s got the songs and the playing on this album is faultless. All we can do is hope that he can carry on the development hinted at here and carry on producing beautiful music.
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Links
Paul Duncan [myspace]