Rise

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Label

Paradise of Bachelors

James Elkington

Wintres Woma

Somewhere around 2011, James Elkington stopped writing songs. He had been the leader of a band called The Zincs; a partner in a band called The Horse’s Ha; and had released an album of guitar duets with his friend Nathan Salsburg, but the question of what this British-born-but-Chicago-based musician was going to do next loomed large, and he didn’t feel as if he had much to say. A change is as good as a rest and, being a natural collaborator, an immediate answer was to start playing in other people’s bands. As both musician and arranger he commenced to work with Richard Thompson, Jeff Tweedy, Steve Gunn, and Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and, after a few years, found that contributing his energies to the music of others had somehow returned to him the energy for his own. Part of that renewed creative vitality came from exploring the acoustic guitar in a new tuning (in which he wrote all the songs on Wintres Woma) and, cashing in on downtime from his touring schedule, by working assiduously to hone both guitaristic and lyrical techniques. Wintres Woma is Old English for “the sound of winter,” a phrase that Elkington found appealing when he encountered it in a book about the historical English imagination. It seemed to resonate in both the sound of his new compositions - the icy limpidity of the arrangements, the snowy tumble of guitars and strings - and with his gnawing consideration of how much cultural upbringing brings to bear on one’s own creativity if given half a chance.

Tracklist

• 1. Make It Up
  2. Hollow in Your House
  3. Wading the Vapors
  4. Grief Is Not Coming
  5. When I Am Slow
  6. The Parting Glass
  7. The Hermit Census
  8. Greatness Yet to Come
  9. Sister of Mine
  10. My Trade in Sun Tears
  11. Any Afternoon