On 2013’s Traditional & Public Domain Songs, guitarist Marisa Anderson took tunes from the American songbook—“The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Pretty Polly”—and warped them to her own liking. The results dropped relics from the past into sometimes harsh, but always interesting, new environments. On her new album Into the Light, she bends American guitar traditions for a completely different, but no less captivating, conceit: They soundtrack a theoretical sci-fi Western of Anderson’s own invention, where it’s up to the listener to fill in the cinematic details.
Anderson's sensitive touch brushes Into the Light with a far-reaching haze that firmly evokes the open, wild West. Her songs often make you feel as though you’re squinting toward the horizon, straining to make out the edges of a mirage. Her faint picking encourages you to lean in and listen closer to soak in the details: She experiments with a more classical Spanish-style guitar on “He Is Without His Guns” and then immediately reprises these beguiling impressionistic strokes on the appropriately airy “Chimes.”
Anderson’s playing throughout the record is understated and exquisite—but then, she’s never veered toward shreddy, explosive showboating. Her guitar grumbles and murmurs, with low-end notes providing subtle muscle behind reverberating riffs and halos of twang. She achieves all of this right off the bat with the album’s opening title track, where she lifts a low, plodding roll with light, inquisitive curls. It’s easy to imagine the song behind the opening scene where we meet the tough and gritty hero/heroine, weary from desert wandering.
The only moments that feel dissonant arrive in “Resurrection” as a few unwieldy notes poke through, sounding like faraway car horns. But these off-kilter moments act as foils to Anderson’s fluid playing, again highlighting the baritone notes that anchor the song. Most often, Into the Light is breathtakingly beautiful: Anderson's licks ripple upward on “The Golden West,” sounding like a sinking stone in reverse. Its patient thrumming is soothing, and Anderson slides Into the Light toward a cinematic-sounding close as she drifts “The Golden West” into the sleepy, soft “End of the Night.”
Into the Light is the kind of record that requires rapt attention, best enjoyed in still solitude. But even as Anderson’s instrument simmers, it still reaches for the great beyond, and she makes you ache to reach along with it.
