ARTIST: Sumner McKane
TITLE: North
LABEL: Don't Hit Your Sister Recording Co.
GENRE: Instrumental
BITRATE: 197kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 42m total
RELEASE DATE: 2005-00-00
RIP DATE: 2006-11-28
Track List
----------
1. Dogsled 4:03
2. Bugs in Her Pockets 2:30
3. Hunting for Salamanders 3:20
4. Careful, It Doesn't Look Safe 3:15
Yet
5. Old House, Friendly Ghost 2:47
(Hopefully)
6. The Woods Across the Street 2:58
When I Was Little
7. Girl on Beach in Black & White 3:21
8. Far-off Exotic Places Like 4:41
Winnepeg
9. Alberta 4:01
10. We Don't Live by a Lake Yet 2:58
11. The Drive to Whitefish: 3:46
Midnight With Concrete Blond at
a Perfect Volume
12. The Fair 2:45
13. Kissed by a Witch in the Woods 2:15
Release Notes:
ôEver since Ry Cooder laid down his lonesome slide guitar on the laconic
soundtrack to Wim Wenders's movie, PARIS, TEXAS, there has been a strain of
ambient Americana music emerging throughout the country. It includes producer
Daniel Lanois's cosmic cajun country, Lanterna's surf-spaghetti ambient-westerns
and Bruce Kaphan's pedal steel guitar in space. Sumner McKane has been
traversing the same terrain for several years now from his home in Portland,
Maine and NORTH is easily his most accomplished work yet.
McKane is one of those guitarists who makes it seem simple, but his easy-going
fingerstyle on electric and acoustic guitars is deceptive. He's an orchestrator
of guitar, creating lush filigree and sometimes searing leads.
For NORTH, he's assembled a small, sympathetic ensemble of drums, bass and
occasionally violin. "Careful it Doesn't Look Safe Yet" is typical, with double
acoustic guitars laying down rivulets of sound while McKane's electric fades in
and out in phantom sustains. McKane's "day job" is playing in a Country &
Western band and you can hear that influence here in the plaintive fingerstyle
picking and pedal-steel-like sustains and bends he brings to his electric
guitar.
Track after track on NORTH, McKane paints a uniquely American landscape, a
travelogue for a cross-country trip from pristine New England winters to the
wide-open expanses of the plains.ö