An Evening with Chris Smither

Price includes all applicable state and local taxesAll About the BonesThe sound and imagery of the 20th release by Chris Smither, All About the Bones, (release date: May 3, 2024 on Signature Sounds/Mighty Albert, distributed by Redeye) is as elemental as the inky black shadows cast by a shockingly bright moon. The listener is welcomed into some gothic mansion on an imaginary New Orleans street, and there in the lamplit parlor confronts the band, a minimalist skeleton crew: Smithers inimitable propulsive guitar and rumbling baritone are joined seamlessly to producer David Goodrichs carpetbag of instruments, Zak Trojanos rock-steady, primal drumming, BettySoos diaphanous harmony vocals, and the flat, mournful flood of Jazz legend Chris Cheeks saxophone.Recorded at Sonelab Studios in Easthampton MA by Justin Pizzoferrato (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., the Hold Steady) All About the Bones has a feel that is somehow baroque and austere at once. Smither and his longtime producer David Goodrich have been refining their musical conversation for decades, both in the studio and onstage, and by now, their bond verges on the telepathic. Goodrich plays on nearly every track. His sound is by now so translucent that it seems to function as a swath of silence, allowing the songs to burn like ciphers in the crackling air.And oh, the songs on All About the Bones. Chris Smither, after six decades of sharpening his knife as a songwriter, can at this point open damn near anything with a flick of his wrist. God and the Devil are opened here. Mortality is too. Politics, consciousness, renewal, family, vulnerability, surrender Smither has sat with these topics like so many Zen koans, for so long, that every line is a pearl. The title track, All About the Bones, kicks the record off with Consider your high station/ think about your fame. All of your creation depended on your frame. Irony, wit, the double meaning of depended each verse is a master class in songwriting.Yet the stark, elemental s