Danny Paul Grody

On his third LP Danny Paul Grody (Tarentel, The Drift) expands upon his brand of American Primitive guitar, nuanced not as much by the flash virtuosity as some of his contemporaries, but rather by a sense of floating space that would belie his work with drone based outfits in the past. While Between Two Worlds also utilizes drone in a traditional sense as it unfolds, several tracks have a certain hushed ground to them that drive Grody's gentle pickings along with a sinuous purpose as if insinuating an unconscious grounding tone throughout. Where many from the Fahey school would insert flurries of notes into a given passage to create tension, Grody does just the same by picking only those notes necessary and bending them around an unsettled center that's pastoral but always with a sense of creeping nostalgia and the loom of darker clouds. In fact with his use of quietly loping synthesizer woven between guitars DPG's closest current touchstone might be Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti, though Grody's desert is never quite as vast or as bleak as Caminiti seems to conjure. And perhaps the crux of Between Two Worlds, is Grody bridging the gap between the fluid tranquility of the fingkerpicked style and his past in the complexities of layered synth. It seems he's found the perfect footing here and that bridge turns out to be tumultuously gorgeous.

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