James Blackshaw, despite recording with an electric guitar for the first time, seems to be in a mood more of defeat or retreat than of newfound inspiration on All Is Falling. It isn’t that electricity fails to offer Blackshaw any notable or distinguishing characteristics. The tones of his 12-string are thicker, richer, and more reverberant than on prior recordings. The electric guitar creates some intriguing textural depth — even when settling into his standard, infinitely circling niche — and allows Blackshaw to experiment with dissonance in ways previously impossible with his cadre of acoustic equipment. Although the introduction of electric guitar accounts for several deviations from Blackshaw’s established milieu, it does not help make All Is Falling feel particularly ‘electric,’ so to speak.
Closer in tone to 2008’s Litany of Echoes than to last year’s The Glass Bead Game, All Is Falling is a somber, troubling suite, one that fails to offer much in the way of gratification, immediate or otherwise. Perhaps “fails” is the wrong word; All Is Falling is yet another marvelous release from a talented, thoughtful musician, but it exists as an expression of interiorized emotion, of centripetal rather than centrifugal force. Those praiseful, public structures from The Glass Bead Game — “Cross,” most notably — have been abandoned for more ponderous, monastic forms. All Is Falling possesses several moments of transcendence, grace, and glory, but they’re fleeting, overshadowed by feelings of doubt and indecision. “Part 2” — one of the suite’s shorter pieces — emblematizes All Is Falling’s patient, reflective qualities. It sounds at first like an internal conversation, with the cyclic guitar ascending and descending, trying to find an opening, a new path to resolve itself. After four deflated minutes, Blackshaw’s arrangement swells, as if epiphanically. Strings buoy the guitar, which now finally scales upward. This respite barely lasts a minute before ending abruptly. “Part 3” then begins, pitched low, returning to the same weighty, troubled circuit that began the preceding section. The reflective, reflexive tone persists for two more parts, inserting low-end drone and nervous Glockenspiel into the conversation.
The portentous mood breaks again, briefly, on “Part 6,” where voices (Blackshaw’s and violinist Fran Bury’s) mark pace metronomically, while harmonizing unconventionally with the other instrumentation. The track never cracks open into an ascending melody, but it feels softer, fuller, as well as more hopeful, than the other segments. That hope is again short-lived, and those same voices soon count the song out, leading directly into the piercing seventh section. The strings dominate the arrangement, first sawing urgently, before growing into a mournful, dangerous wail. Evoking plagues, the concluding minutes of “Part 7” sound like a swarm of bees, holy only in the most terrifying of ways. Featuring the most notably electric instrumentation on All Is Falling, “Part 8” closes out the album on an unexpected, ambivalent note. The droning strings have been replaced with jagged pulses of guitar, and they affect a mood less panicked but still somber, whose interpretation is open to the listener. And so the album bleeds out softly, without offering transcendence or release.
All Is Falling is not deeply satisfying, but this lack of satisfaction is itself an integral piece of the album’s ascetic nature. It would hardly be fair to knock Blackshaw for making such a deliberate, emotionally demanding work, but it would also be dishonest to imply that All Is Falling is fundamentally invigorating or inspiring. So, even if not entirely electrifying, Blackshaw still manages to tap into deep emotional and intellectual currents, which makes for a worthwhile but exhausting experience.
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