Concordian

Kelly Joe Phelps releases his eighth - yet first solely instrumental - album, Western Bell, expressing cool rhythms of a vast and haunting western landscape. With no vocals at all, Phelps's slide guitar takes the lead, producing poignant and wistful ballads that a voice couldn't give proper credence to. Although solo, Phelps's guitar takes on many faces; crossing from sorrowful country to light-hearted jazz that creates a sublime dissonance throughout the entirety of the record. The album art also plays on the theme of isolation of Phelps's lonely artisanship - almost entirely black, with non-descript images of black-and-white. The art gives as few clues to the songs as the non-existent vocals. But even more eerie than the three images of him occurring on the three outside walls of the folded-paper CD case is the image placed underneath the disc: a dark and out-of-focus seascape with Phelps now gone, explaining what's "beneath" the album - a lonesome passage with no Phelps as a guide, just the wailing of his communicative strings