Susan Alcorn, "And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar"

Alcorn's pedal steel music has always seemed to be more part of a journey rather than a recording career. Lauded by fellow Houston luminaries Charalambides and Heather Leigh Murray, she delves into the forests of possibility between jazz, improv and her own interpretations/transcriptions of choral work. Alongside other experimental players Alcorn is helping to prising the blackened fingers of Country music’s stranglehold on the Pedal steel.

Olde English Spelling BeeThe extensive liners inside the vinyl’s gorgeous gatefold sleeve talk about hope, but the music offers only glimpses of this. The opener “Heart Sutra” rings out a sleek toned Morse code refrain, a signal to open hearts and minds, but this is the first sides only such moment. The 16 minute title track keeps to a darker and more discouraging path, single notes subtly warping into something that’s peculiarly of the other. As the sleeve notes point out, Alcorn uses other parts of instrument to generate different pitches, the ends of strings providing deeper and damper notes. At times her performance sounds like that of a stoned and lost 12 string player, Alcorn going for melodic parts while her hands instead subconsciously transcribe her worry and anguish.

The second side’s four tracks keep up the clear recorded sound but the playing seems softly and delicately deranged. A dark mood tries to cast itself over the rest of the record, an air of desolation in the line of wrong spiralling notes. But despite this negativity, the songs seem to find a stasis by balancing the forces of bleakness and strength, repeated listens revealing strength in the minimalism. Its surprising how someone who uses notes as sparingly ends up wrapping the album in such confusion, it’s an unusual ride. It might not be too long for that resurrection that Susan Alcorn's waiting for.

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