wes tirey: black wind

On Black Wind, songwriter/guitarist Wes Tirey makes the case for quality over quantity. After a stream of well received cassettes, he assembled a reserved trio and laid down the soft law on a single night. Whereas his previous releases were turned inward, this album opens out like Terrence Malick meditating on prairie grass. The arrangements are spacious, simple structures of voice and acoustic guitar, with sparse backing from a telecaster and a trap kit. In addition to this fine album on Scissor Tail Records is a thematically linked book to be released by Cabin Floor Esoterica. Titled Melodrama Blues: Selected Lyrics of Wes Tirey, it collects writings from Black Wind and three past albums, all related via Tirey's feel for a mythological Americana, the threads of surrealist biblical imagery that underlie our cultural cosmos.