The notes that accompany Will Stratton’s eighth album, ‘Points of Origin’, state that it is a work of fiction and that any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. It is the type of statement that would normally form the caveat at the start of a film and offers an indication of what to expect from this record. It is an album of great lyrical ambition, density and complexity. The novelistic references are Thomas Pynchon and Richard Powers, the movies ones Terrence Malik and Paul Thomas Anderson which make it clear that it is not framed as an emotionally-manipulative, amped-up blockbuster. There is subtlety and detail at play. As a film it would be an ensemble piece as the songs concern the lives of several Californians connected by coincidence and the fires they experience over a period of four decades. Stylistically, the music brings to mind peak early 1970s singer-songwriters, accomplished and beautifully arranged, helping to create its own distinct world.
At the centre are two brothers, who after running away lead parallel lives. Opening track, ‘I Found You’ finds one of them living in the northernmost part of the State, in the southern base of the Cascades. In common with all bar one of the songs throughout ‘Points of Origin’, it has first person narration, in this instance from a character who tried being a conman until the age of 24, an indication of how the participants’ aims are not necessarily noble or successful. Beginning with reedy saxophone, it is given a countryish tinge by Hamilton Belk’s pedal steel and Joshua Marre’s 12-string guitar. Set around Stratton’s piano and unassertive but smoothly enjoyable West coast voice, it gives the reassuring impression that the listener is in accomplished hands for this journey.
The other brother has found his way from state prison to fighting a fire in Santa Barbara and tells his tale on ‘Jesuita’. There is a Paul Simon-like quality to Stratton’s voice and delight in the little lyrical details (“we sweat through our fireproof uniforms quickly”) as well as the fingerpicking guitar. A grad student with a job as a fire lookout narrates ‘Firewatcher’ and gets blessed with some wonderfully rhyming schemes (“now half my friends are crazy and at the bottom of a glass / and here I am, suspended with the sun careening off Tiago pass.”) Reid Jenkins’ violin and Marre’s mandolin lift the song’s closing section mirroring the fire being described.
‘Temple Bar’ hits a melodically memorable peak. The way the piano weaves between guitar, violin and Justin Keller’s saxophone is especially satisfying. The story is told by a barfly who recalls his encounters with characters who appear as narrators on other songs. There is a gloriously understated arrangement to ‘Delta Breeze’ with its interplay of guitar and violin, its melancholy mood matching the aerospace engineer’s tale of calculating missile paths and losing faith in deterrence. A different approach is taken with ‘Red Cross Star’. Without a first-person narrator, it instead provides an existentialist overview of the region. It is unsparing in the history it describes (“fading memories of genocide / distant mountains, receding sand / mass conversion and stolen land”) yet delivered with a relaxed melodic charm.
The piano and vocal melody of ‘Bardo or Heaven?’ is the album’s most immediately enticing and ultimately exquisite track. Guitar, violin, saxophone and Aaron Roche’s trombone provide its denouement with a heightened drama as an anonymous observer delivers an account of wildfire smoke along the Central Valley. ‘Higher and Drier’ sees a welcome return for his fingerpicking guitar style and Léna Bartels’ backing vocals giving the song a country flavour. It is a divorced former artist turned realtor’s tale which displays Stratton’s impeccable knack of delivering a telling line in an unassuming manner (“I found a knack for selling things as long as they weren’t mine.”)
The clarity of his voice is emphasised on ‘Centinela’ accompanied by sparse piano and pedal steel, a song from another inmate’s perspective, one who has become unmoored from reality and “a mere martyr to fire.” It is all rounded off with ‘Slab City’ on which Stratton is accompanied only by guitar and where he inhabits a recently retired public defender who offers the formerly imprisoned brother a place to stay and tells him all about his parents, a tale involving stealing cheques, methadone, schizophrenia and arson.
Musically, ‘Points of Origin’ is not a record that screams for attention. It has no big choruses and is all the better for it. What it has in abundance is delightful detail, understated smooth musicianship and vocals that makes an ideal companion to great storytelling. It is an album to revisit constantly and burrow deep into as it gradually reveals its charms.
Will Stratton: Points of Origin – Out 7 March 2025 (Bella Union)
Stratton – Temple Bar (Official Lyric Video)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
