WPRB blog
Wed 3/9, 8PM: Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band live on Jon Solomon’s show
Listen to 103.3 fm WPRB on Wednesday, March 9th at 8:00 pm ET as Jon Solomon finally welcomes No Quarter recording artist Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band to the station for a long-in-the-works live session.
If you’ve tuned to WPRB over the past two years, textured, kinetic instrumentals off Forsyth’s prior two albums “Solar Motel” and “Intensity Ghost” have garnered a bunch of airplay.
Last Friday the group dropped the double LP “The Rarity of Experience,” their most diverse (and potentially best) record to-date. Selections can be streamed below.
To celebrate this “Record of the Year” contender, Forsyth and band stopped by WPRB to record a 45:00+ set that will debut this Wednesday evening.
I hope you like guitars.
Here’s more information on this Wednesday’s live performers:
Philadelphia’s Chris Forsyth has long proven himself a skillful and inventive modern guitarist, one whose combination of hard-won chops and dazzling natural ability can easily awe the sort of people who maintain Tumblr pages devoted to photos of pedal boards. It’s always been pretty clear that the guy, to borrow a phrase, knows the literature. But on the new double LP The Rarity of Experience (No Quarter), Forsyth proves himself to be equally as adept a composer and bandleader as he is guitar stylist. Though the album may be loosely divided by a more frenzied and fiery first half and a mellower, more idiosyncratic second act, to view The Rarity Of Experience as merely two sides of a coin would be inaccurate, as Forsyth’s Solar Motel Band, over the course of nine originals and a cover of Richard Thompson’s “The Calvary Cross,” sustains momentum while evoking a wide range of moods.
The Solar Motel Band is Forsyth’s not-so-secret weapon. Much has already been written about the dynamic rhythm section of bassist Peter Kerlin and drummer Steven Urgo, whose sensitive and powerful contributions continue to establish the firm foundation upon which the group creates its unique synergy. Non-touring member and frequent Forsyth collaborator Shawn E. Hansen adds variety and verve to the Solar Motel Band’s guitars/bass/drums format with his expansive and expressive use of Sequential Circuits’ new Prophet 6 synthesizer. And second guitarist Nick Millevoi, the newest member of the group, proves a crucial ingredient and a perfect foil, complimenting Forsyth’s Stratocaster slink with flashy passages of tremolo picking and a distinctly raunchier, more robust tone.
Forsyth knows how good his band is, which is probably why he has chosen to revisit two of his previously released tunes, both originally released on 2012’s Kenzo Deluxe as a solo pieces. The Rarity of Experience’s reimagining of “Boston Street Lullaby” is a clinic in tension and restraint, while “The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues,” replete with the hand drum patter of percussionist Ryan Sawyer and the spacey tenor sax and trumpet of the New York ecstatic jazz stalwart Daniel Carter, becomes a groovy flux that evokes Getatchew Mekuria sitting in with Amon Duul II.
Cecil Taylor once observed that “the roots [of a musician] show more in maturity than in youth.” If this is true, “The Rarity Of Experience, Pt. 2” may provide the album’s most revealing glimpse into Forsyth’s teenage playbook, pitting the arachnidian guitar wanderings of The Days Of Wine and Roses against the rhythmic lurch of Remain In Light. Similarly, on the gorgeous “Harmonious Dance,” Forsyth’s bubbly auto-wah, combined with Hansen’s saturated synth twinkle and the rhythm section’s slippery minimalism, flashes back to Tortoise’s jazzy period circa TNT.
Few modern groups would sound equally at home onstage at the Fillmore East circa ‘69, CBGB’s circa ‘77, and Lounge Ax circa ‘96, but the Solar Motel Band of The Rarity Of Experience is such a band. It unequivocally places Forsyth at the top of a very short list of modern bandleaders worthy of carrying the torch of the masters.
WPRB Charts 2/28/16: Vinyl Edition!
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