Palo Colorado Dream

So this is what all the fuss is about. Listeners might be forgiven for not fully grasping Anthony Pirog's status as Washington, D.C. area guitar god if they've only heard his previous Cuneiform label appearance on Janel & Anthony's 2012 album, Where Is Home. That's not to say Where Is Home wasn't filled with masterful playing by Pirog and his duo (and life) partner, cellist Janel Leppin, but it was also a relatively low-key effort — and appropriately so — reflecting its themes of displacement, rootlessness, and loss of community. While far from a full-on skronkfest from start to finish, Palo Colorado Dream, Pirog's 2014 Cuneiform debut as a leader, often finds him comparatively energized, cranking up his electric guitar and arsenal of effects and joined by two very fine avant jazz accompanists, acoustic bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Ches Smith, on all but two of the album's 11 tracks. Yet the fiery and noisy tunes are still balanced with calming ones — everything sympathetically captured by engineer, mixer, and co-producer Mike Reina, Pirog's former bandmate in Skysaw — and for all his technical prowess, Pirog possesses a skilled composer's knack for memorable themes and melodies. The brief opening title track provides a subdued yet expansive start as echoing guitar harmonics glisten over a lovely atmospheric chordal melody and deep muted synth/keyboard tones (Pirog multi-tracks more than guitars if a piece calls for it) — but don't get too relaxed, because by the middle of the next tune, "The Great Northern," he's ripping burning notes from his axe like a seasoned blues-rocker with Formanek and Smith in solid support.

Like other tracks across the album, "The Great Northern" is a study in contrasts; Pirog brackets the song's incendiary midsection with a twangy theme, clear in the high notes and rumbling in the low, ringing out like a mix of Bill Frisell and Krautrocker Michael Rother. Pirog similarly cuts loose over a driving bass-drums vamp (curiously, in six) during the middle of "Song in 5" (which does begin in and return to its titular time signature), and — after he adds layer upon layer of guitars, synths, and loops over Formanek and Smith's strong backing — his screaming solo in the ultra-heavy second half of "The New Electric" is thrilling to behold. The intimate "I'm Not Coming Home" finds Pirog on acoustic classical guitars accompanied by Formanek's warm resonance and Smith's subtle brushwork; meanwhile, attacks of pure sonic squelch and noise follow the angular post-bop theme of "Heads," all three trio members seem wired through Pirog's effects paraphernalia on the lumbering experimental "Threshold," and the guitarist burns his fretboard Sonny Sharrock style during the closing free jazz noisefest "Vicious Cricket." Smith and Formanek get their own solo showcases in "Motian," written by Pirog in homage to the late iconic drummer, but make no mistake, Palo Colorado Dream is an Anthony Pirog session all the way, and an ear-opening display of his stunningly wide range of talents.