As with all Greek myths, there are several contradictory versions of the story of Hephaestus, but in each one, he was exiled from paradise and forced to toil at his craft on the Earth before he could go home, transformed into an artisan god. I’m sure Ben Chasny wasn’t making such lofty claims when he gave Hephaestus’ name to a song on his new album, but the parallels are plain.
Back when Six Organs of Admittance was a few years old and still fairly divisible by Leo Kottke and the No-Neck Blues Band, Chasny left Northern California as a stern fingerstyle guitarist with penchants for Asian modes, lo-fi noise, and occult antiquity. After 20 years of roaming, he returned to Humboldt as a more tempered songwriter and a superior sound artist of capacious scope. Alone, he drew the ancient redwoods around him like a curtain and set to work on Time Is Glass. Rather than adding new experiments to those spread across his dozens of releases, he resumed them, using all the powers he’d banked, from the special vantage of where it all began.
“Hephaestus” is just the latest time that Chasny has set an instrumental on Greek marble—he memorably put Actaeon, who was turned into a stag and eaten by his dogs for glimpsing Artemis bathing, in the first song on Luminous Night—and it’s probably the best. On Time Is Glass, the song is a dramatic outlier: a musky, supple, soul-shivering drone piece that credibly evokes sparks peeling from a divinely immense anvil. But this is what passes for a back-to-basics Americana record in Chasny’s expandable world, and most of the songs sink deep acoustic roots before growing in gratifying ways, whether subtle or surprising.
The bookends, “The Mission” and “New Year’s Song,” lay out his songwriting materials in their sparest pieces—the room tone chirring like cicadas, your ear right up against the hole in the guitar, and a thin, sweet, slightly aloof voice floating down from somewhere above. Replicating them four or five more times with some atmospheric interludes would have made for a fine record. But Chasny has never been content with fine, and with his unusual blend of restlessness and focus, he keeps breaking new connecting paths between leafy, well-worn ways.
This exploration unfolds with intense patience, each song striking out a little further. An electric guitar glints like light through the clouds in “Slip Away” before “Theophany Song” reminds us exactly why Chasny was once so associated with Devendra Banhart, and then the forge heats up for a spectacular second half. “My Familiar” is a haunting dirge until an electric guitar appears, the muted riffs and sailing leads structured tightly as a proof. It continues the uncanny chimera of Steve Stevens and Bill Frisell solos that Chasny concocted on his last album, The Veiled Sea. “Summer’s Last Rays” seems like a pure technical showcase of fanning runs, leaps, and trills until an invasive species of reversed, gurgling effects starts tugging at the relentless figures, refuting their rigid account of linear time. The two and a half minutes of wistful acoustic sprays that open “Spinning in a River” set up a drop so good, so unguessable yet fitting, that I genuinely don’t want to spoil it.
Lyrically as well as musically, Chasny accretes meaning in thin layers of glaze. His words don’t look like much on the page but drench the music with emotional color. It would be unseemly for any one line to stand out too much; everything he makes is shaped to its purpose, without extra parts or redundant functions. After 25 years of Six Organs, you almost have to wonder what deal he made with the gods to keep him from either settling into a rut or taking ill-considered detours. Being so well established, he could easily spend a few years here and there just strolling through his richly timbered guitar playing. But he hasn’t. You still never know from one song what might appear on the next, or even where the song you’re listening to might go, and it keeps the music fresh even when it’s retreading hallowed ground.
