James Blackshaw has long been a shining light in the world of virtuoso guitar playing. In the same way his compositions build and bloom slowly and steadily, Blackshaw has, over eight previous albums, quietly but insistently made a name for himself with his stunning, inhuman abilities on the guitar and his ability to mesh that with a knack for tone and texture, so that his albums are rarely about just virtuosity but rather about virtuosity as a road to beautiful, melodic songs.
On recent records, he's pushed his musical palate past the usual acoustic playing into other realms. 2009's The Glass Bead Game closed with the stunning 19-minute "Arc," which featured Blackshaw playing simply enough on a piano while slowly drenching the notes in chorus effects, so that by songs end each note has blurred into the other to make a dizzyingly huge sound. 2010's All Is Falling found Blackshaw experimenting with electric 12-sting guitar for the first time, and the results were equally expansive, pushing Blackshaw past the intimate organic sound of his acoustic guitar and into something larger, airier.
But now, after a stint at Young God Records, he's returned to Important Records (who released his great O True Believers back in 2006), and with that returns comes another one.
Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death, finds Blackshaw back to the acoustic 12-string, but while it may feel like a retread of past successes, he hasn't forgotten what he learned on his last two records. Though the opening title track, with its rolling notes and ruminant space, may feel like an outtake from Blackshaw's breakout record, 2008's Litany of Echoes, it's actually got the subtle layers of guitar and piano he's learned more recently. It's also got a far more melodic center to it. If Blackshaw's playing used to be built on insistent repetition, now it's more about variations on a riff, and the difference is small but key.
This makes Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death the most revealing album of Blackshaw's career, but it also makes it his bleakest. That insistent breathing renders every note just a bit heavier and, despite the great playing here, it can weight things down too much at times. On such an intimate album, however, the most intrusive moment comes with the piano number "And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways." The song features vocals (and words written) by singer Genevieve Beaulieu, and while her voice is far-ranging and impressive, it feels like too much, like a melodramatic moment on an album of emotional restraint. It also distracts from the words Blackshaw is not saying. He prefers to use his guitar (or piano) to speak for him and it is in his wordless playing that this album has the most to say. Even if, at times, it's a bit harder to hear than it should be.
