One joy of ambient music: the space it gives a listener to just be. Departing from prescriptivist emotional cues and binary thought, the genre rewards patience without demanding a verdict. A country-indebted subgenre has emerged within that universe thanks to the pedal steel guitar, a notoriously fussy and expensive instrument that delivers heavenly tones for all the trouble it demands, as suited for conjuring mystical desert landscapes as it is for adding elasticity to country classics. Following leads from Susan Alcorn and Daniel Lanois, acts like SUSS, Chuck Johnson, Mute Duo, and now North Americans have all recently gamboled in that realm. The project began as a vehicle for Los Angeles-based acoustic guitarist Patrick McDermott, who is joined by Portland pedal steel player Barry Walker on Roped In, a rich and languid addition to the country-ambient canon.
Roped In bears some of the hazy float of Walker’s 2018 album, Diaspora Urkontinent, but a softer, more melodic focus sets it apart from both Walker’s more free-ranging solo work and McDermott’s earlier material. On Going Steady, the previous North Americans album, the guitarist occasionally tucked his fingerpicking under sheets of fuzz, but he allows himself more breathing room here, drawing out melodies between Walker’s resonant curls. “Good Doer” is the album’s closest thing to a downer, with an anxious guitar line and fuzzy pedal steel, but even it can’t sour the album’s sanguine mood. Whatever you need to feel, Roped In gives you space to feel it.
The album’s nine pieces are all fairly short, none of them lasting for more than four and a half minutes. Rather than prioritizing complete sensory immersion, Roped In focuses on the tension of form and formlessness between the acoustic and pedal steel guitars, emphasizing the former’s agility and the latter’s unbound contours. On “Rivers That You Cannot See,” Walker curves sustained notes over McDermott’s short cycles of strumming, then layers his own picking into a dense peak. The pair slow to a molasses-like slide on “Run Down,” with low reverb forming a droning foundation to their interplay. They’re at their strongest with “American Dipper,” where their tumbling instrumental lines become almost inextricable.
While Walker and McDermott make a capable team, guest appearances from guitarist William Tyler and harpist Mary Lattimore bring more nuance to their efforts. Tyler’s contributions bookend the record—opener “Memory of Lunch,” plus the album’s final two tracks—and his own lithe fingerpicking style is well-matched to McDermott’s without upstaging it. Meanwhile, “Run Down” and “Furniture in the Valley” show Lattimore’s knack for bringing extra sparkle to everything she touches.
The soft edges of Roped In make it both a sublime record in its own right as well as a pleasant, inviting portal into a wider world of simpatico artists. The album feels like the aural equivalent of gazing into a massive and well-appointed aquarium, a vessel for color and movement that quietly soothes as it shuttles along.
Buy: Rough Trade
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