The Sweet Serenades of Julian Lage
On a masterful new album, the guitar virtuoso charts a melodic path through the tangled history of American song.
Julian Lage - Speak to Me
I can’t think of another contemporary guitarist whose playing is as clean, as clear, or as song-like as Julian Lage’s. Eschewing distortion and sidestepping pedal effects, Lage emulates the warm, rounded phrasing of a great singer. Not for nothing is one of his new compositions called “Serenade,” as it bears less in common with an ax-wielding agitator than with a seasoned crooner.
That incredible voice that Lage conjures from his instrument serves as the narrator, protagonist, and emotional lodestar for Speak to Me, a masterful new collection of all original material. Offering an expansive view of American song and a varied assortment of musical settings, the album holds together thanks to the primary role of the guitar, always occupying center stage and conveying melodies with directness and amiability. The album’s title is apt: For all of Lage’s musical ambition, he remains deeply committed to an intimate, conspiratorial connection with the listener.
Speak to Me was produced by Joe Henry, among whose gifts is an uncommon skill for coaxing singers into soulful, fully-engaged performances. He brings that same gift to bear for Lage’s guitar, placing the musician in an array of solo, trio, and sextet settings that demonstrate the lucidity in Lage’s playing.
Henry’s previous production credits include The Bright Mississippi, the 2009 masterpiece from pianist Allen Toussaint— an important reference point for what Lage is doing on Speak to Me. Both albums evince an appreciation for jazz lineage without ever sounding beholden to it, and both cherish the improvisational spirit of small-combo interplay without losing their orientation toward full-bodied songwriting. Lage doesn’t have Toussaint’s deep roots in New Orleans lore, but with Henry’s help, he does conjure the same borderless spirit and joie de vivre.
Take “76,” a springy tune toward the end of the album. Lage plays a simple refrain, as unembellished as a pop song, before he and pianist Kris Davis trade spirited solos. The head-then-solos structure is straight out of classic bebop— yet in terms of its feel, the song has as much in common with the rowdiness of rock, the kinetic pull of dance music.
Another touchstone is the music of Bill Frisell, the iconic guitarist who played with Lage on 2022’s fine View with a Room, and whose conception of American music is similarly porous and wide-ranging. Speak to Me finds an antecedent in records like Blues Dream or History, Mystery, albums that indulged Frisell’s wide-ranging interests in country, folk, R&B, and American classical music. But where those albums feel carefully composed, Speak to Me kicks up a little more dust, reveals a greater sense of spontaneous discovery.
The most Frisellian composition here is “Omission,” a cheerful country ramble that finds Lage doubling up on acoustic and electric guitars. This isn’t his first entrée into country— his breakthrough album was titled Love Hurts, after the Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons song of the same name. And yet “Omission” indicates just how much Lage has grown into a wholly original, lived-in approach to American roots idioms, elegant but not the least bit stuffy.
His excursions into rock and roll are livelier still, and every bit as convincing. “Northern Shuffle” conjures raucous roadhouse energy, and benefits greatly from the hoarse tone of saxophonist Levon Henry. In the increasingly frantic “Speak to Me,” Lage and his band harness the testifying energy of vintage gospel and blues— as channeled through Albert King, or even Little Richard.
Though noise and dissonance are anathema to Lage, he occasionally embraces the curated chaos of spontaneous discovery. The song that feels most improvisational is “South Mountain,” which begins with shadowy scene-setting from Davis’ piano and Patrick Warren’s prepared keyboard effects. The rest of the band enters for a folksy reverie, gradually descending back into soundscape territory with whispery woodwinds and foreboding chimes.
Guitar is unquestionably the primary voice here, yet the supporting cast plays with just the right dash of color and personality. Davis’s piano work on “76” is a highlight, recalling the cerebral funk of her own masterpiece Diatom Ribbons. Drummer Dave King provides a steady rumble throughout, shining on propulsive songs like “Tiburon” and the title cut. Lage’s most essential sideman is bassist Jorge Roeder, who plucks out sonorous accompaniment on the opening “Hymnal” and proves his jazz chops with a leisurely stroll through “Two and One.”
As for Lage, he demonstrates a confident virtuosity throughout, exhibiting amazing dexterity and expressiveness without doing a lot of conventional “shredding.” (His frantic licks on “Speak to Me” tread closest.) His gifts as an instrumentalist are intertwined with his gifts as a melodist, and his tuneful playing is a conduit for ravishing romance in slower numbers like “As it Were.” Graceful orchestration from Warren only adds to the song’s cinematic allure.
Only once does Lage play unaccompanied, on a six-minute acoustic etude called “Myself Around You.” Here Lage allows folksy flourishes to merge with classical forms, not unlike Ethan Iverson’s recent piano sonata. The song feels like a world unto itself, and in that sense it’s Speak to Me in microcosm— masterful in its grasp of emotion, style, history, and imagination.
My rating: 9 out of 10
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