Six Organs of Admittance has always found peace in patience, even when that peace is meted out only after fingers have been jabbed in eyes or a bag of crazy pills emptied. With For Octavio Paz, single chair Organist Ben Chasny lingers on the path to redemption, but it's a quieter route this time out, and where it goes, there's neither electricity nor the need for human voices.
The all-acoustic recording was originally released in late 2003 by Time-Lag as limited vinyl. Now released on CD, non-vinyl junkies are given the chance to hear Chasny emoting through his fingers. On Paz, he's discovered a handful of melodies in a rusty Hills Bros can, buried under the humus in a leafy green clearing. They still smell like coffee a little bit, but that aroma mixes with the smell of the woods, and carries them on humidity over the graves of caterpillars. After an introduction of sustaining notes and solemn bells, "When You Finally Return" establishes Paz's gentle, pastoral tone. The melody isn't direct; it hangs as smoke does in shafts of light. But with the aid of a few plucked overdubs and his own wordless vocal sighs (the only voice heard on the entire record), Chasny insistently and effectively molds both song and mood. The result sticks around like memories of summer evenings.
"Elk River" is equally evocative, its sway somehow gorgeous and forlorn all at once. The cut's quiet pauses keep fooling you into thinking that the slide show is ending, but Chasny keeps coming back to tell another sad tale. "They Fixed the Broken Windmill Today"-- its title alone an entire short story-- runs on a consistent whisper of nylon strings as deft, vaguely Eastern-tinged fills undulate over the low rumble like ribbons in a breeze. Though they vary from melancholy to warm memory in between notes, the emotions Chasny creates on For Octavio Paz are always stark and imagistic. The recording's first portion becomes a meditation in acts, with each track summoning some other piece of Chasny's skill as a player to speak without lines.
But all of this is mere setup for the lengthy finale, a 28-minute one-man show of steel string poetics called "The Acceptance of Absolute Negation". It could be a soundtrack to a murder in the Badlands: Spiraling lead notes echo through a petrified forest as the deed is done, followed by a moment of solitary meditation. But mad from the heat and the smell of blood, the realization becomes sudden and painful, and there's nothing left to do but run. Notes tumble over one another, trying to put ground between them and the act. Things slow then to a pensive crawl. There's a pause, and then another section of contemplation. It's an incredible piece, ably and intently drawing on the album's spectrum of moods. This summer, ride the darker wave to a place of quiet light.
