In recent months, 23-year-old UK guitarist James Blackshaw has burst fully-formed onto the folk underground, his remarkable talents already seeming at peak maturity. Over the course of a handful of limited-edition LP's and CD-R's, Blackshaw has established himself as an instrumentalist of astonishing grace and delicacy, seeming as though he's gobbled and digested whole the primitive folk canons of Takoma and Vanguard. Relying primarily on 12-string guitar, Blackshaw's intricate creations web together Robbie Basho's wayfaring mysticism, Ben Chasny's soft-focused acid tongues, and the rustic fantasias of Sandy Bull. Blackshaw's latest release O True Believers is his best-sounding and most complete work yet; its every dazzling figure cast in amber sunbeams as his playing moves in a decidedly baroque direction, his compositional engines laboring to outpace his nimble fingers.
The slight imbalance between Blackshaw's skills as a composer and those as a guitarist are most noticeable on the album's opening convocation "Transient Life in Twilight". Utilizing a thick, John Fahey-like open tuning, this lengthy piece has a circular, repetitive construction that fixes attention on Blackshaw's nearly inhuman dexterity. As the track gathers momentum, his immaculate playing achieves a cascading, harp-like complexity, sounding almost as if Blackshaw has the ability to lift and strum a small harpsichord. Impressive though his playing his, however, the 11-minute track feels a fraction overlong as it reiterates its simple melody with a single-minded concentration that suggests Blackshaw might be perfectly content to continue on indefinitely.
Even longer is the album's 18-minute centerpiece "The Elk With Jade Eyes", but here Blackshaw has wisely chosen to branch out instrumentally, adding elements of sitar, harmonium, and hand percussion to the track's crystalline wells. This rapturous epic unfurls with a patient, snake-charming grandeur. Blackshaw hammers his guitar like an Appalachian dulcimer one minute, and tenderly plucks it like a Renaissance lute the next to craft his utterly singular cross-traditional tapestry. The track's evocative, otherworldly spirit lingers on the following "Spiraling Skeleton Memorial", which has the intoxicating languor of a late evening gondola serenade. On the set-closing title track, a lilting chorus is carried by what is credited as harmonium but sounds as much like a wistful melodica. Rippling with chimes and percussion, this irresistible song is as close as Blackshaw gets to conforming to a standard pop structure, and by this evidence he shows an effortless knack for more straightforward melodic forms.
Right now the field for folk-based guitarists is becoming crowded with unique and exceptional talents-- Chasny, Jack Rose, Matt Valentine, Richard Bishop-- so Blackshaw's greatest obstacle at this point might simply be listener fatigue. Yet as the radiant O True Believers illustrates, Blackshaw is able to differentiate himself through his exotic lyricism, stray pan-ethnic flourishes and pure unmasked virtuosity, while his youth suggests he's only just begun to tap his true capabilities.
