james blackshaw: summoning suns

Summoning Suns is James Blackshaw's tenth studio album and the first recording to feature his voice and lyrics. Drawing inspiration from '60s and '70s singer-songwriters, baroque and orchestral pop, and folk music, while still sounding contemporary, Summoning Suns is Blackshaw's foray into more traditional forms of songcraft. Blackshaw sings in a gentle but assured voice while his words combine his personal experiences, neuroses, and fantasies through many layers of abstraction, poeticism, and dark humor. While the deft acoustic guitar fingerpicking of Blackshaw's previous recordings is still a prominent part of the sound, the songs are lushly and intricately arranged for drums, bass, piano, violin, flute, and pedal steel guitar and feature contributions from Simon Scott (Slowdive), Annie Nilsson, and Japanese musicians Mori Wa Ikiteiru and Kaoru Noda (with whom Blackshaw duets in Japanese on one song).