Alexander Tucker

On his second full-length for Thrill Jockey and sixth overall, Tucker continues to slowly edge away from the folk-meets-drone experiments of his early career towards a more fully cooked stew of psychedelia, progressive folk and arcane exploration. Were he a novelist, Tucker would obviously be adding new chapters to a fantasy series whose narrative of magic, chemical derangement and personal histories was slowly revealing a complicated and seldom predictable plot. References to everything from Victorian glass to Christian glossolalia to The Lord of the Rings mark the paths that wind through this world. Musically, Tucker is increasingly open to instrumental and vocal collaboration and expansion, letting violin, synthesizer, electronics and tambura enrich his central acoustic finger-picking on guitar. Should he continue to broaden his scope and variations, this epic series could be worth many more volumes.