In the 60-some years since John Fahey christened his self-taught approach to fingerstyle guitar “American Primitive,” generations of new players have aspired to the mesh of rustic mystery and technical excellence he brought to his surrealistic country blues. Columbus, Ohio-based guitarist Matthew J. Rolin, however, was already deep into his own take on the sound before he heard of Fahey. Inspired by later refractions of Fahey’s influence rather than the original source, Rolin’s crooked path to solo guitar bypassed the rural affect and music-school stuffiness of many fingerstyle disciples. His work transfigures American Primitive’s backwoods vibes into something decidedly DIY.
Rolin’s exploration of folk guitar began in experimental circles. In addition to his solo work, he’s collaborated with Detroit noise band Wolf Eyes and performs alongside dulcimer player Jen Powers in the pensive electro-acoustic improv group Rolin/Powers Duo. His self-titled album is his third proper full-length, joining two slightly more polished sessions that swim amid a Bandcamp page filled with phone-recorded live jams and one-off cassette releases. While his new release is Rolin’s most fully-realized work to date, it maintains his raw first-take energy and unassuming home-recorded production.
The moving “One Day I Will Be Free” opens the album with organ drones and field recordings of distant sirens and rushing traffic that give way to a wash of acoustic 12-string. Ringing chord clusters fade in and out of intricate fingerpicking, cycling through phrases of free sprawl and doleful melodic figures that build into an immersive meditation. The song wanders reflectively for 11 and a half minutes, but it comes off less like a contemplative creekside stroll than a haggard walk home after missing the last bus.
Much of the album lives in similar emotional territory, tempering joy with frustration. Other than the occasional found sound snippet, a tambourine on “Cold Rooms,” and Jen Gelineau’s violin scratches on finale “Blue Columbus Moon,” Rolin’s solitary guitar is almost always the only instrument. The blare of a passing jet all but overpowers the music in the beginning of “Two Fourteen”; once that interruption fades, a bath of muddy tape delay drowns increasingly discordant playing. The competition of pretty acoustic guitars with noisy disruptions recalls Joan of Arc’s early experiments dismantling folk music. While Rolin hardly qualifies as emo, he shares a distinctly midwestern melancholy. Restless, dissatisfied melodies swaddled in tape hiss make even his brightest compositions sound weary.
While the rainy spirit and homespun quality of Rolin’s music separates him from more academic fingerstyle contemporaries, he can’t quite be classified with other unplugged noise dudes, either. There are echoes of Bill Orcutt’s shattered blues in the dizzy rumble of “Rivets” and a stripped-down reading of Ryley Walker’s freefalling astral pop on “Neverendingness,” but Rolin’s songs never ramp up or even attempt to launch. Instead, they trudge steadily forward. A soft argument between hope and defeat runs through the album, and Rolin presents it with the calm resolve of someone who’s probably sat alone with an acoustic guitar as the first of five acts at a basement gig. Unconcerned with virtuosic technique or reincarnating the ghosts of past guitar heroes, Rolin’s overcast instrumentals convey the reality of his own encounters with folk blues.
