Sand City is Steve Gunn and John Truscinski's first album as a duo, but it sounds like they've been playing together for a while. Technically, they have-- both are members of the New York outfit GHQ, alongside Pete Nolan of Magik Markers and Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards. But their two-man guitar-drums project has been going only for about a year. In that short time, they've honed a remarkably confident, open sound. They mix touches of folk, psych, raga, and rock into hypnotic pieces that straddle the line between improvisation and songcraft.
None of that should be a surprise to anyone familiar with Gunn, whose 2009 solo album, Boerum Palace, was a masterwork of guitar exploration. Flying through finger-picked blues, country twang, and wiry electric essays, Gunn mined many traditions while adding a new touch to each. It would be tempting to guess that record's diversity was a product of doing it himself, but Sand City shows his wide-ranging style can also mesh tightly with a collaborator. On all four tracks, his string wizardy snakes through and wraps around Truscinski's drumming, as if the two had discovered a secret ability to silently trade thoughts and rhyme ideas.
Calling their conversations telepathic might be overdoing it, but there is a magic, almost psychic quality to these songs. Maybe it's just the way the duo approaches raga, with a loose, intuitive sense that's somewhere between Jack Rose's solo mediations (themselves inspired by John Fahey) and the Sun City Girls' reverent adoptions of Eastern melodies. The best example is the album's longest track, the 13-minute "Wythe Raag", which starts like a sunrise over a temple, gradually building to a sonic epiphany. As Gunn's electric guitar climbs up Truscinski's mallet-heavy steps, I'm reminded of John Coltrane and Rashied Ali's intertwining prayers on their 1967 LP, Interstellar Space. It's obviously way too early to put this pair in that class, but the fact that they even bring such reference points to mind is impressive.
Either way, reducing Sand City to comparisons or influences is unfair. Gunn and Truscinki's conversations, like any good musical dialogue, are marked primarily by the unique idiosyncrasies of their particular speech. It will be interesting to see where they take their discussion next-- Sand City is only 31 minutes long, and you get the sense that the pair could make reams more music like this without repeating themselves much, if at all.
