Reviews
Nick Jonah Davis Album: Rose Delta Rising
Label: Cardinal Fuzz
Tracks: 8
Website: https://nickjonahdavis.bandcamp.com
A dig through Nick Jonah Davis back catalogue quickly demonstrates his considerable skill with the guitar. Skill in dexterously playing both the electric and acoustic guitar and more crucially considerable skill in generating an atmosphere with his playing. The Guitar Recordings, volume one self released, volume two on the American Tompkins Square label are exercises in perfect finger picking guitar, cinematic and expansive rather than showy. HOUSE OF DRAGONS brought a more experimental approach to coaxing sound from Davis' guitar and touches of desert music in his use of percussion, slide and occasional other instruments. 2020's WHEN THE SUN CAME developed that Derbyshire pastoral Paris Texas Ry Cooder, blending sublime slide with Jack Rose like playing. As well as a gloriously spatial duet with Nathaniel Mann of Dead Rat Orchestra.
That duet with Nathaniel playing other worldly whistles leads me some tenuously to ROSE DELTA RISING, Nick's latest album. After four albums of mostly solo guitar with sometimes multi tracked sometimes with minimal accompaniment the 2026 is a band record. "Spoonbill" opens with Nick's distinctive plaintive slide guitar, but it's call flows over a subtle string arrangement and accompaniment from Joe Danks' brushed drums and Neal Heppleston's double bass. There is an epic sense to the arrangement. "Poa Kichizi" ( half a Swahili term for feeling great) has the rhythm section positively skipping along around some shimmering William Tyler like electric lead from Davis.
"To Be A Manalishi" has a hypnotic motif with some nimble playing and interesting percussion and strings. Manalishi was a word Peter Green made up for his infamous song about money and greed, but the guitar nods more to the expansive western vista of Tyler or Bill Frisell with the bluesy sustain of Peter on tracks like "Spoonbill". Again the very English melancholic of the strings evokes Nick Drake arranger Robert Kirby. The title track is a duet between Nick Jonah Davis and Gayle Brogan with drone notes, runs of otherworldly guitar and more eerie strings. There is a suggestion of flight and weightlessness as the instruments slowly circle each other.
"The Green Tree" has another shimmering motif that nods to the electric sophistication between Americana, Jazz and Soundtrack music of Bill Frisell. Davis slowly coaxes notes out of his guitar over a languid bass and drum rhythm, this one I could of listened to all night. "Dawn Karawak" has the rattling drums and dangling guitar that evokes the endless horizon of road or train music. Like "Poa Kichizi" "Dawn Karawak builds to a real intensity . "Whistle On Woolf" introduces the most incredibly expansive slide notes that overflow with atmosphere and sense of place. Coupled with the strings Davis, Heppleston and Danks' truly cinematic pan shot music. "Peter And The Lark" has Nick playing delayed solo electric guitar and again he coaxes out strums and runs of notes with the most sensitivity letting them hang in space on this longer piece. Slowly he builds cosmic slide pairing it in a call and response with picked notes, letting it run like a celestial phones ring.
I have loved Nick Jonah Davis' darkly atmospheric solo guitar music since I saw him play live at Cafe Oto in London in 2011 and bought the first volume of Guitar Recordings. He has always a master of space on both the acoustic and the electric, but from the first uplifting notes of "Spoonbill" this album, especially the ensemble tracks with Joe and Neal sounds like a new beginnings an opening into something expansive. Love them all, but really really love the wider sound of this one that lingers in the air.
Marc Higgins
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Spoonbill
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