With a folk-rock bent and an ear for the mystical, US singer-songwriter Steve Gunn has a staunch CV as a right-hand man. His many solo recordings have kept pace with simpatico support roles – in Philadelphian slacker-sage Kurt Vile’s band the Violators, or collaborating, as on 2013’s Golden Gunn duo album (with Hiss Golden Messenger). Having previously produced Michael Chapman, Gunn rejoins the veteran on his most recent tune, After All This Time.
The Unseen in Between (what a title) kicks Gunn up a gear, redeploying his influences into a left-field but welcoming whole, pearlescent enough as a background listen, but sufficiently arresting to make you stop and appreciate Gunn’s chops. British folk-rock, Indian ragas and 60s pop inform New Familiar. The Smiths-y Vagabond, meanwhile, finds Gunn duetting with Espers’ Meg Baird on an atmospheric road movie of a country tune (“took a job and cleaned some tombstones”) lit up by Gunn’s unostentatious guitar work.
Then there’s the unadorned Stonehurst Cowboy, which hymns his recently deceased father, and the Philadelphia neighbourhood where he grew up. The video finds Gunn in graffiti-strewn London, underlining, perhaps, the British roots of his Americana, and the continuity of the troubadour tradition.
