I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away＜限定盤/Silverado Brown Vinyl＞

Ill Be Waving as You Drive Away is Hayden Pedigos third album of instrumental music for the Mexican Summer label. The Texas-born guitarist developed his tranquil playing style recording for a handful of small indies in the late 2010s, but it wasnt until 2021s Letting Go and its follow-up, The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored, that his music found a wider audience. As a player, he falls somewhere between the rugged American Primitivism of 60s pioneer John Fahey and the detailed new age of the Windham Hill labels 80s heyday. Hes also not afraid to take a psychedelic turn or two and often colors his delicate playing with the textural support of synthesizers, pedal steel, and piano. Named after a 1978 episode of Little House on the Prairie, Ill Be Waving as You Drive Away completes what Pedigo considers his "Motor Trilogy," a reference to the distinctive album covers by painter Jonathan Phillips, which depict the artist interacting with different vehicles, from semi-trucks to burning sedans. On this one, he glowers from the cab of a pickup truck, while his alternate black-hatted image waves from an old highway sign. Its all on brand for an artist who takes his visual imagery as seriously as his music. Like its predecessors, the album is pristinely played and recorded with songs that waver between delicate beauty and unidentified anxiety. Pedigos compositions are unhurried and deftly built, often with multiple movements that either introduce or remove different layers. The string arrangements, courtesy of Nathan Bieber, are particularly effective here on tracks like the spacious "Houndstooth," which midway-through, recalls the beauty of Bert Janschs classic album Avocet. The songs were written during an artists residency in Wyoming, another landscape of wide vistas and big skies that echoes those of his native Texas Panhandle, or his present home in Oklahoma. While the lovely title track ends the albums main program, Pedigo indulges his whimsy with a bonus closing number on which he earnestly narrates the albums credits over a rack bed of ambient synths and fluttering guitar. Its a little jarring, but also in keeping with his quirky, well-intentioned vibes and makes the album feel like more of an event. Its another quiet gem from an artist in the full bloom of his talents. ~ Timothy Monger