Beauty in Loss

Saying goodbye to loved ones is never easy, but putting it into art helps in a way nothing else does and often leads to something beautiful. Even between two very different musicians and very different sounds, there is a recognizable emotional thread that stays the same from Moldova to midwest America.

Brian Eaton
Like a Root Out of Dry Ground
Eatin' Records
2025

As the old philosophical saying goes, you can never step into the same river twice, because it is never the same river and you are never the same person. Brian Eaton's catalogue tends to make that sentiment more clear than most. Each of his crossings is shaped by the water's condition at that moment (hot or cold, still or choppy, etc), enough that the resulting work might barely have the vaguest resemblance to the one before. The musical voice is the same—a big-picture production approach that gives an evocative soundscape as much weight as the notes or melody—but there is no telling what form the actual song will take until it comes out. With Like a Root Out of Dry Ground the conditions are outwardly calm, but the kind of deep calm that only comes after some turbulence that can still be felt lingering underneath.

Eaton's keyboards and light electronics sound simple to the point of plainness, while the equally straightforward melodies still tell a story rich in layers. The strongest overt shadings are of Pat Metheny, not due to any specific guitar work (there is only little guitar here in a rhythm role), but in a familiar down-home Americana feel with plenty of quasi-harmonica synth tone. Threaded with a from-the-heart simplicity, these quaint melodies simply sound the way memories of home feel. The quietly hypnotic "Oregon Yew" floats somewhere between thoughtful and haunting; "The Olive, the Fig, and the Vine" wanders in and out of a dreamy haze of chimes, while the rustic "Unleavened Seeds of Salt" feels made for strumming on the porch on a lazy summer day.

The album interestingly saves its more unsettled moments for the bookends. Some quiet introductory electronic taps evoke wandering in a fog before, while Eaton's beautiful closing elegy drifts from warm piano to mournful ambient haze before fading out to a startlingly unsettling finish. It is just a bit cruel to take that turn at the end of such a heartwarming listen, but that moment would honestly never belong anywhere else. If the water's conditions are unflinching, the song will follow suit, wistful or quietly sad or comforting or all of those at once.

Aneta George
Eclipses
Self Produced
2025

Aneta George sounds like someone clearly in touch with the mysteries of nature straight from the start. Gliding in on a cloud of smoky sax-and- bass, she lulls us into a sinuous trance with some low Romanian murmurs, then croons in a wordless vocalese with the allure of a snake charmer. Recorded during a solar eclipse, the first half of this program lingers somewhere between quasi-nocturnal and otherworldly. George and a simpatico quartet weave a bewitching trio of Balkan-jazz grooves to start, stepping through slinky Eastern scales and balancing the haunting minor of "Denis Oro" with enough spryness to make it a dance. While all the players are solidly in tune, Nicolas Bauer's supple bass quietly dazzles a bit more often than the rest. The cycle ends with a downbeat meditation on love and loss, her sad crooning accompanied by some wistful piano that lets in just enough light through the cracks.

And that was the daylight section. A lunar eclipse provided the occasion to recording the second half of Eclipses, and interestingly enough, it begins by brightening things up. The lightly bouncy "Wake Up" finds George offering some carpe-diem encouragement in her sweetest tone of voice yet. Again the bass almost steals the show, but as the set proceeds through mercurial rambling to traditional Macedonian dance, Martin Milcent and Denis Guivarc'h get their chance for a couple dancing piano-sax workouts soon enough. By the time of the closing "Dharma," the wild spirit of the blood moon is infecting the whole group and George sounds half in another world herself. Her wordless swoops and moans tap into something increasingly mysterious until the affair clatters to a close. If it first emerged as a form of therapy for grief, Eclipses elegantly succeeds at moving through it and reconnecting with life, however bracingly unpredictable.

Tracks and Personnel

Like a Root Out of Dry Ground

Tracks: Branches Lay Broken; Like a Root Out of Dry Ground; The Olive, the Fig, and the Vine; Unleavened Seeds of Salt; Oregon Yew; The Sitka Sings, The Sitka Sleeps; Words Forever Echo (For Dad).

Personnel: Brian Eaton: electric & acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion.

Eclipses

Tracks: Vistina; Molitva na Sonceto; Denis Oro; Echoes; Wake Up; Rollercoaster; Ne Si Go Prodavaj Koljo Cifligot; Dharma.

Personnel: Aneta George: vocals, compositions; Martin Milcent: piano; Denis Guivarc'h: alto saxophone; Nicolas Bauer: bass; Hélios Mikhaïl: drums.

Comments