Dean McPhee’s debut EP takes a divergent path from the current prevailing solo guitar trends, venturing into neither Fahey/Basho-inspired steel guitar virtuosity nor pedal-stomping soundscapes. Instead, Brown Bear quietly captures the sound of a man simply playing a guitar extremely well, with little ostentation or outside artifice.
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Brown Bear consists of three songs of varying lengths, all of which were at least partially improvised and recorded in just one take. I am not much of a process fetishist, so that did not strike me as especially impressive in and of itself. However, McPhee’s nail-it-in-one-take artistic purity is probably responsible for much of the EP’s endearingly loose and spontaneous feel, so I appreciated it nonetheless.
The brief and mournful “Sky Burial” opens the record with gentle minor arpeggios, insistent bass notes, and a clear, clean melody, which McPhee deftly twists and dances around. The following piece takes a more minimal and static approach, but McPhee employs his arsenal of old analog effects for some unusual colors and textures. While not as lean and focused as its predecessor, it is instead packed full of captivatingly baroque passages and inventive harmonies. The piece has a bit a hallucinatory feel as well, as it quavers and glistens with heavy chorusing and expertly utilizes delay to give the central melody a ghostly after-image.
The entire second side of the record is taken up by the lengthy title track, which I initially found to be deceptively underwhelming. In fact, its first half could easily be mistaken for a variation of “Sky Burial” with the addition of a chorus pedal. Though certainly enjoyable, it caused me to wonder if McPhee had exhausted his ideas after just two songs. Thankfully, however, my pessimism was premature and ill-founded, as “Brown Bear” soon transforms into an extremely cool and completely unexpected foray into elegantly warped psychedelia. The bass line from the opening motif remains in a slowed-down form, which keeps things coherent, but a hazily repeating, thickly harmonized loop suddenly begins to lag, squirm, and lurk ominously beneath its melody. Eventually, all of the more straightforward elements of the piece fall away entirely and leave only a sublimely spacey ambient coda. It's quite a neat trick and Dean manages it quite seamlessly, resulting in the record's clear highlight.
Solo guitar albums are not generally my favorite thing due to their inherent limitations, but I enjoy Brown Bear quite a bit. This is a very promising and assured first release, as McPhee displays a rare combination of technical skill, simplicity, and subtle unpredictability. A full-length is due next spring.
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