A staple of country music, the pedal steel guitar is inextricably linked to one of the instrument's most captivating qualities: its ability, within the confines of a pop song lasting only a few minutes, to shape the open skies and endless spaces so pivotal to the mythology of the American West. If you intend to claim pedal steel as your primary instrument, especially in ambient music, you have a choice to either lean into these associations or resist them. On his new studio album Sun GloriesChuck Johnson unapologetically chooses the latter.
This is the most restless, probing album yet from the Oakland guitarist, who started out acoustic before giving steel a lead role in 2017 Balm. Plenty of ambient artists are embracing pedal steel right now, from brooding North American duo West Coast to the outspokenly nationalistic SUSS, but none are as willing to abandon the instrument's ready-made connections as Johnson. It has more in common with atmospheric techno stalwart Polmo Polpo (aka Sandro Perri), who used a steel to raise the dust clouds of shoegaze.
The range of Johnson's vision is most evident in the two absolutely titanic closing tracks Sun Glories. “Teleos” at first sounds like an endless bicycle soup until it gradually assembles into a six-note riff. Then the real surprise: drummer Ryan Jewell comes in with a massive fill, elevating the song into the kind of uplifting post-rock often associated with sport and athleticism – remember Explosions in the Sky's Friday Night Lights soundtrack, the 2010 Olympic commercials featuring the xx's “Introduction,” or countless GoPro videos scored by the amplified downtempo of Tycho and Ratatat. 'Broken Spectre', which comes at the end, follows a similar no-beat structure followed by Jewell's triumphant appearance and subsequent fireworks.
It's a good sound for Johnson, mostly because it allows him to color so far away from the country box that steel players are so often confined to. The four interludes hover at a lower altitude, continuing 2021's almost chamber music approach The Cinder Grove, in which Johnson used his instrument as a textured bed while the instruments and strings danced freely at the front of the mix. These are less subtle, notable mostly for Johnson's duets with any instrument: a string section on “Ground Wave,” a throbbing organ on “Superior Mirage” that hints at My Bloody Valentine's classic “Is This and Yes” that doesn't have released. .”
