Still, Here

Marisa Anderson doesn’t need vocals to make her music sing. With a lithe touch and a controlled sense of drama, the Portland, Oregon, guitarist is a storyteller channeling centuries of American folk history and volumes of emotion. Despite her grounding in tradition, Anderson is no purist; on *Still, Here*, she uses multitracking as a tool to explore fuller, more developed songwriting. On opener “In Dark Water,” ruminative fingerpicking and mournful hints of the blues worry a path over held synthesizer and ghostly piano; on “The Fire This Time,” chords mapped out on the acoustic serve as a backdrop for a burnished electric lead. And on the easygoing “The Low Country,” she turns herself into a muted guitar trio, panning gentle electric across the stereo field over a soft acoustic cushion. Even at its most intricate, however, her music remains soft and restrained, and in some places, like the atmospheric “Night Air,” practically ambient. She concludes with “La Llorona” and “Beat the Drum Slowly,” a pair of traditional folk standards. They’re reminders that as singular as Anderson’s vision is, it’s part of a much longer conversation.

Marisa Anderson is one of the most eminent guitarists working today. Her lucid, eloquent approach to guitar music and composition has established her as an unparalleled artist and an insightful, coveted collaborator. Anderson’s work draws on a mosaic of folk music and lives in conversation with myriad musical traditions. Her music is inviting and candid, beckoning the listener into sprawling ecosystems and intimate corners alike, from barren landscapes to verdant thickets, impassioned communal experiences to pensive reclusions. As a master of her instrument, Anderson translates abstractions into undeniably moving music, tracing through traditional folk tunes, imagined Sci-Fi films, and foggy sanctuaries of sound. Still, Here is Anderson at her most direct, laying bare her practice of processing and understanding the world through music and distilling that practice into pieces as expressive as they are transfixing. The pieces of Still, Here center around Anderson’s present. The album is a compendium of living moments captured by her preternatural ability to mold human realities into enduring, lyrical compositions. Away from the road for the longest stretch of her career, the making of Still, Here affirmed for Anderson the role of the guitar as an essential tool in processing external and internal realities. “I don’t get ideas and then turn to the guitar, rather I turn to the guitar to find out what my ideas are. I turn towards it for meaning.” The discordance of protest and upheaval emanates from a propulsive acoustic ostinato and mournful dueling pedal steel guitars on “The Fire This Time,” pausing only to allow space for the blare of sirens on the Portland street near Anderson’s studio. “The Crack Where the Light Gets In” rapturously revels in the glimmers of hope that peek through a pall of darkness. Across Still, Here, Anderson’s playing transmutes the tributaries of fluctuating emotions into a unified flow, stirring and sublime. Anderson’s compositional process is flexible and wide ranging, resulting in a collection of pieces that are varied in tone and timbre. Still, Here’s improvisational pieces like the seething “The Fire This Time” and the achingly beautiful “Waking” showcase Anderson’s immediate and sheer elemental capacity to speak through her instrument. Anderson transforms the traditional tune of personal tragedy “La Llorona” by deftly pairing the intimate, physical sound of a nylon string acoustic guitar with a hazy, otherworldly electric guitar. “In Dark Water” propels kinetic fingerpicked figures across a weightless droning synthesizer and scattered electric piano. A hypnotic requinto on “Night Air,” which was sampled on Matmos’ 2020 album The Consuming Flame, steadily oscillates a repeated riff as emphatic piano chords trade chordal melodies. Still, Here emphatically makes the case for Anderson’s profound artistry, each piece intimately revealing a new aspect of Anderson as a player and as a human being navigating the path laid before her. Marisa Anderson’s Still, Here is for the listener an alchemical salve, the work of a gifted player with an exceptional ability to convey the complexities of the human experience through composition.

On an alternately deliberate and exploratory new record, the guitarist and composer finds flashes of beauty at the heart of each instrumental tale.

After a couple of inspired collaborative pairings -- first with drummer Jim White, then with fellow guitarist William Tyler -- Marisa Anderson returns to solo work on the ambling and spacious Still, Here.