This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Guitar albums can often be pretty irritating affairs. Often they’re loaded down with wanky, gunslinger-style solos whose only real purpose is to show off to other six-stringers.
But obviously, Papa M alter-ego David Pajo prefers to use his talent for creation instead of competition. Instead of wielding his axe like, well, an axe, this former Slint and Tortoise player uses it like a paintbrush — a soft tone here, a bold colour there, even a wide swath of feedback every now and then. On these 11 tracks he creates vivid, captivating portraits of landscapes filled with everything from pyramid-shaped Jimmy Page riffs and post-rock cathedrals of haunting Frippish harmonics to gothic Appalachian shacks. With all this, who has room for wanky solos — and more to the point, who needs ’em?
