Daylight Daylight

10年以上にわたりアメリカの実験的/ギター志向のロック音楽の最前線で活躍してきたSteve Gunn。7作目となるスタジオアルバムをシカゴでプロデューサーの James Elkingtonと共に制作。よりシンプルに削ぎ落としたアプローチを選び、Gunn と Elkington を中心とした演奏に、Nick Macri、Hunter Diamond、Ben Whiteley、そして Macie Stewartが加わっています。

Appearing just a few months after the all-instrumental Music for Writers, Daylight Daylight is Steve Gunns second album of 2025. Tonally, it combines the minimalism of its predecessor with the misty, springlike feel of his last songwriter record, the 2021 standout Other You. Where that album featured an expanded cast of collaborators and a folky full-band jangle, Daylight Daylight presents Gunn as more of an acoustic troubadour. Its his first for the No Quarter label and was produced by roster staple James Elkington, an artist who occupies a similar role to Gunn; a revered guitarist and songwriter with a lengthy and diverse indie pedigree. Here, Elkington is Gunns primary collaborator, arranging the strings and woodwinds that give Daylight Daylight its billowing, sometimes abstract nature. Outside of its orchestral elements, the remaining instrumentation is handled between them with a heavy emphasis on Gunns muted strumming and dusty vocals. The songs themselves are uniformly relaxed in tempo with a meditative likeness that keeps all seven tracks in the same arena. Through oblique allusions and poetic phrasing, the album approaches themes of death and renewal, although not in a depressive way. Daylight Daylight is a hopeful and curious record, a journey. Highlights like "Hadrians Wall," "Loon," and the title track are gently mesmerizing, made even more special by Elkingtons gorgeous arrangements which were said to be inspired by Ennio Morricone. If so, they favor the Italian maestros subtler side. Robert Kirby, architect of so many classic U.K. folk orchestrations (Nick Drake, Ralph McTell, Vashti Bunyan), might be a more apt comparison, though there is nothing overtly retro about Gunns music. His songs exist as they are, in the present moment, almost on the verge of dissolving into places unknown. ~ Timothy Monger