Ian Moore - Luminaria (2004)

Ian Moore's sixth album -- the first for the North Carolina indie Yep Roc -- cements the singer/songwriter's slow detachment from his blues-rocking roots. Although the Texas-bred guitarist's self-titled 1993 debut earned comparisons to the work of the then recently deceased Stevie Ray Vaughan, Moore has been moving away from the blues ever since. In fact, the contemplative, slow-building songs on Luminaria sound basically like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot minus the noise interludes: country-tinged folk-rock songs given imaginative, occasionally dissonant arrangements. For example, the choruses of the otherwise straightforward "New Day" are colored with enough guitar fuzz and "Penny Lane"-style trumpet fills to appeal to the most confirmed psychedelia fan, and the seven-plus minute "Caroline" shifts from its weepy country-rock melody into a lengthy waltz-time passage filled with dub-style echo and keening, wordless vocals. Not all of the songs are that adventurous (although a song about Sir Robert Scott's disastrous 1902 Antarctic exploration shows a compelling disregard for the usual pop song clichés), but there's not a duff track on Luminaria, and the songs are so varied and interesting that this is Ian Moore's best album by some distance.