Everywhen We Go is the second album by the unimpeachable trio of Mike Baggetta on acoustic and electric guitars, Jim Keltner on drums and percussion, and Mike Watt on bass. Cohesively structured with an air of spontaneity, the ten-track LP is a non-vocal affair with expert interplay that’s spacious yet disciplined as it thrives on the deepened familiarity of the participants. The record is out now on vinyl and digital through BIG EGO Records, the label of the album’s producer Chris Schlarb.
The story is that Wall of Flowers, the 2019 debut by Baggetta, Keltner and Watt was the byproduct of a cold call by the guitarist, who admired and had been influenced by the other two points in this creative triangle. The results are impressively together given the specifics of its creation, though I don’t want to suggest they just arrived at Chris Schlarb’s BIG EGO studio and proceeded to wing it.
Wall of Flowers is a potent dose of expansionist instrumental rock, at times atmospheric and with an edgy post-fusion jazz tinge, which is unsurprising given that Baggetta has cut four albums for the Fresh Sound label, three with his quartet (Small Spaces, 2008, Source Material, 2010 and Thieves and Secrets, 2013) and one with his trio (Spectre, 2016).
After Wall of Flowers release, Baggetta and Watt took it out on the road with Stephen Hodges stepping in for Keltner (who doesn’t tour) under the name mssv. They also cut two records, Live Flowers (2019) and the studio follow-up Main Steam Stop Valve (2020), the title referencing Robert Wise’s 1966 film adaptation of Richard McKenna’s novel The Sand Pebbles (the album’s title also directly inspired the initials of the trio’s moniker).
Both mssv albums are highly worthwhile, as was the show I caught earlier this year at The Ottobar in Baltimore, but it’s terrific that the trio with Keltner hasn’t fallen by the wayside, especially as Everywhen We Go’s progress is discernible in the opening title track’s snaky, post-Eddy desert noir-isms. And yet the cut is appealingly relaxed, as this follow-up largely detours from the more harried (and at times even sludgy) approach that helped shape up Wall of Flowers.
Composed by the trio, “This Is Not a Euphemism” dials up the intensity as Baggetta uses his partner’s rhythmic bedrock as a springboard for melodic exploration. It’s in sharp contrast to the atmospheric sensibility of “In the Center,” though there is an underlying tension in the track’s succinctness that offsets Baggetta’s attractive string cascades.
It’s in “Yank It Out” that the record reestablishes the sustained mayhem that marked the debut. It’s a Watt composition that spotlights the guitarist at his most frenzied (a truly glorious soaring spazz-tangle of an extended solo) as Keltner roams expressively and Watt dishes one of his now-trademark non-hackneyed grooves.
“Fake Break” finds Baggetta shifting into acoustic strum mode with his cohorts large in the scheme, but it doesn’t take long for some George Harrison-esque slide and a touch of amp crunch to emerge. From there, “Not Enough of Time” throws a bit of a curve as it blends a bit of drifting, Germanic abstraction with guitar motions recalling John Fahey’s Vanguard recordings.
“Fearmongers” is the album’s other group composition (seven of the album’s pieces are by Baggetta) and it finds the group at their most angularly jazzy, while “Measure of a Life” which comes complete with a fingerpicking solo mode intro, combines calm electric textures with a solid rhythmic bedrock and weirdly reminds me just a bit of Yo La Tengo’s “Night Falls On Hoboken.” Closing with a slight return of the title track, Everywhen We Go is a solid grower of an LP that’s collective acumen never falters into an overabundance of flash. It should be of interest to fans of both classic rock and post-rock.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
