Dan Pitt Trio: Stages

Shades of Link Ray's "Rumble," from 1958. Shades of Dick Dale's 1963 hit "Miserlou." Shades of every guitar/bass/drum band that has ever set up in someone's garage in an attempt to work on their hard rock and roll chops, trying to become the next heavy metal band to hit the charts.

Canadian guitarist Dan Pitt rolls with the guitar trio format on his Stages, though his trio is a good deal more intricate and musically skilled than the typical garage band. Much of this set of Pitt's originals contains a foreboding dirge-like mood ("Foreboding," "Part Two"). Some of it simply rips ("Fifteen Minutes," which, for the record, clocks in at a bit over four minutes). Everybody has their chops in order—Pitt, bassist Alex Fournier, drummer Nick Fraser. And "Ghosts" is a dense sound. It could be mistaken, on a blind listen, as something guitarist Terje Rypdal recorded for ECM Records, while the title tune unfolds in a patient manner, getting prickly along the way, the band sounding dangerous, like a trio of new sheriffs in town, looking to kick some ass and take names later.

Then turn back and play from the beginning—because Stages invites this—and find, again, "Fourteen Days," a tune featuring Pitt's delicacy and deftness of touch—a composition with a folk song quality. Call it a muscular "electro-folk." Then spin on to "Tape Age," and find Pitt playing with a ringing clarity of tone in front of the beautiful murk of Fournier's bowed bass and the subdued and deliberative rumble of Fraser's drums.