The PR guys are ever eager to find new labels to hang music on – and here we find 3HatTrio’s sound dubbed “American desert music”, this being “a new music which responds to the natural world of this sacred American homeland”. Inspiration is drawn from the landmark photography of Ansel Adams, who in 1958 had given us the iconic image of Arizona’s awesome Monument Valley.
Listening to 3HatTrio’s music, one can certainly hear the truth in the press handout, that they use the raw materials of American traditional music (the basic acoustic instrumentation of banjos, guitars, violin, upright bass and foot percussion) to “capture the formidable and unique ancientry of the American desert landscape”. Greg Istock, Hal Cannon and Eli Wrankle are billed as from…
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…Utah, yet between them they encompass diverse musical backgrounds and experiences – banjo man and folklorist Cannon had been a founder member of the Deseret String Band, while bassist Istock (originally hailing from Florida) has a grounding in Caribbean music and experimental jazz and 18-year-old Wrankle, a violinist since age four, has recently taken up formal musical studies at Southern Utah University.
So there’s more to 3HatTrio’s act than their intriguing combination of primitive storytelling and awe-struck pictorialism, for it creates something quite a bit different from the straightahead revival act, for their vision is at once deeply rooted and deliberately maverick and individual. The maverick vibe is consistent, if mildly wayward at times, for it manifests in a variety of musical aspects and modes. The most beguiling of these, I find, are the tracks graced with Hal Cannon’s sepulchral (somewhat Brett Sparks-like) vocal – for instance the slightly scary White Pressing Down, the middle-eastern-flavoured Sand Storm (which boasts a fine bass solo) – while the eerily metaphysical import of Nothing strangely complements his spooky reworking of an excerpt from the traditional ballad Left Texas, which Oklahoma cowboy singer Dick Devall had sung for John Lomax. Greg Ibstock’s more anguished brand of soulfulness is found to be a prominent signature on his own compositions, of which Get Back Home and Get On The Bus are probably most typical; his no less passionate delivery proves equally attractive in its own rough-shod way. The album production is clear and detailed, and the whole affair really does have a very compelling atmosphere.
1. Get Back Home (3:07)
2. Carry Me Away (2:24)
3. Nothing (2:38)
4. Tammy’s Sister (4:01)
5. Off the Map (3:31)
6. White Pressing Down (3:33)
7. Western City Nights (3:58)
8. Get on the Bus (3:37)
9. Sand Storm (6:24)
10. Left Texas (3:53)
11. Crippled-up Blues (2:17)