Will Stratton - Rosewood Almanac (2017)

Born in California, mostly raised in New Jersey and currently an upstate New Yorker, Will Stratton started songwriting and recording while in high school, before going on to study philosophy and music composition. He developed an intimate relationship with guitar after discovering Nick Drake, whose fluid, effortlessly beautiful style, led on to similarly cherished Britfolk icons - Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch. But Stratton s studies led also to chamber music and minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley, which equally influenced his simultaneously complex and direct sound.

Rosewood Almanac was named after Stratton s current pride and joy: his acoustic guitar.The guitars I love most tend to be rosewood, they have a crystalline tone, but also a really dark heft. When Bob Dylan was obsessed with his wild thin mercury sound, that s the sound of rosewood to me. It s almost menacing in its precision.

The album s spell weaves over a contained ten songs and 34 minutes, from the extra crystalline sparkle via the addition of electric guitar and rhythm section in the opening Light Blue , to the pared back voice-and-rosewood effect of the closing Ribbons . Having listened intently to Leonard Cohen and Hank Williams, singers who try to wring as much meaning out of every sound they re making, in correspondence to every other sound, Stratton has focused his singing and lyric-writing more than ever before. Some words are political, some are imagistic, some are personal, he vouches.