Marc Ribot: Map of a Blue City

As a session guitarist (Waits, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Costello, John Zorn, Jeff Bridges and others), Marc Ribot brings an evocative angularity. But left to his own devices he can be challenging, playing with jazz musicians and left-field avant-types like himself.

His 2023 Connection album with Ceramic Dog was close to Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth.

This new album had its origins decades ago when he submitted a rowdy version to a death metal label who rejected it as “too dark”.

Over the years he refined it and as, his first vocal album, it comes off as askew alt.folk with strings, organ, accordion and flute in places.

He adapts Allen Ginsberg's Sometimes Jailhouse Blues into a backporch virtuoso performance,the overall downbeat mood possesses a beguiling psychic anxiety (“where will you run when the world's on fire”) and the playing and singing oblique.

There's excoriating and searing guitar on the seven minute instrumental Optimism of the Sun which closes proceedings.

He says this about the production: “It all boils down to what kind of room the listener feels they’re standing in. There are some hard truths and cold observations in these songs.

“I wanted the room to be small enough so that we couldn’t turn away: but warm enough to feel like you’re hearing it from a friend.”

A gifted friend . . . with issues, perhaps.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here