Guitarist Jeff Parker goes it alone on Forfolks, his sophomore outing for Nonesuch/International Anthem after 2020's funky Suite for Max Brown. It also follows 2016's Slight Freedom (Eremite) as his second solo guitar offering. Throughout his three-decade career with Tortoise, Isotope 217, and as a sideman, Parker's playing has been marked by clean lines and an uncluttered approach to harmony, tone, texture, and rhythm. He often favors the role of ensemble player to soloist, and he's both on Forfolks. The set was recorded in his home studio and juxtaposes six originals and a pair of covers, Thelonious Monk's "Ugly Beauty," and the Richard A. Whiting/ Newell Chase standard "My Ideal."
Opener "Off Om" is a brief, hypnotically rendered intro that resembles a nursery rhyme. Parker joins several interlocking melodic statements with circular, nearly infectious counterpoint in an earworm for the listener. Parker composed "Four Folks" with Ted Sirota in 1996 and first recorded it with Tortoise. His droning thematic statement delivered in warm, rounded tones opens the harmonic frame on several ideas that Parker interrogates; it creates an entirely other soundworld that unveils several more consonant melodic layers. His reading of "My Ideal" retains its recognizable form as he combines lyric and rhythmic vamps to excavate -- with glorious ostinatos -- subtle chromatic feints that inform the elegant melody. Single "Suffolk" (the subject of a wonderful video by interdisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith) opens gradually with restrained drones and overtones. When Parker delivers the rhythmically pulsed melody, he recalls the sound of a griot playing a kora; multiple strings pick out and spin off fragmentary elements of the whole showcasing its intricate complexity. Just as the listener grasps one body of sounds, Parker shifts focus and highlights another section's adventurous resonance. "Ugly Beauty" is introduced plaintively with Parker balancing the changes and melody sans effects. In the second chorus he introduces reverb and subtle drone layers while dissecting the changes; it allows his sonic and tonal tenets room for expansion inside the overarching theme. At nearly 11 minutes, "Excess Success" is the longest tune here. It's composed entirely of intersecting bass and comp lines, constantly involved in exchange and complement along a lithe yet funky phrasing pulse that allows for harmonic extrapolation and subtraction to deliver a spiral of color, texture, and spidery grooves. The guitarist originally cut "La Jetée" with vanguard supergroup Isotope 217. He offers its moody intro with circular fingerpicking on the changes. A minute-and-a-half in, again employing all bass and comp lines, he touches on the original melody with a different harmonic emphasis, dislocating its central statement with something more fragmental, but no less alluring.
Forfolks' package contains a liner essay by Parker's longtime friend and colleague Matthew Lux; his insight into the guitarist's process is at once authoritative and revelatory. Forfolks is as welcoming as it is musically adventurous. Void of production or virtuosic solo excesses, it allows the listener inside the guitarist's soundworld for an instinctively guided, infectiously listenable tour.