ED RAWLINGS – A Foolish Inconsistency

Ed Rawlings 2024

ED RAWLINGS –
A Foolish Inconsistency

Picking up the pieces from four-decade cache, Californian six-stringer rides the crest of a wave.

A mainstay of San Franciscan music scene, Ed Rawlings seemed to have missed a lot of chances to strike on his own, but the thing is, the guitarist didn’t feel the need to do so, because involvement with such ensembles as HOSTAGES and LOST LAKE provided him with multiple opportunities to flex an instrumental muscle. So if not for the pandemic that allowed Rawlings to sit and listen, and assess what he’d amassed and never let out, “A Foolish Inconsistency” wouldn’t have happened, even though the dozen numbers on display turn the album’s title on its head by presenting a stylistically coherent, albeit fabulously varied in tuneful terms, front. Escaping an understandable urge to show off his talents, Ed headed for the surf-rock waters, and the results of the veteran’s efforts are impressive.

That’s why, while opener “Departure” initially has hints of fusion about its acoustically tinctured panorama, the piece refuses to abide by the genre’s highfalutin rules and is resolved into a gentle rumble which could issue a shadow of “La Bamba” had Rawlings not wrapped this arresting melody in rainbow-like harmonies and had “Waiting For Something” shape sweet expectancy. As Uriah Duffy’s bass and Jeff Campitelli’s drums drive momentum forward even on the elegiac “The Long Way Around” which evokes Morricone’s expanses, and “Arizona Skies” which exposes the richness of Ed’s six-string tone, “Riff Raft,” where elegance and insistence coexist, and “Snap,” where the organ-bolstered rumble and trad-jazzy jive chase rockabilly bliss, deliver rapture in spades. And though “Thunderhead” has a harder veneer and, indeed, riffs to propel it to tentative frenzy, the nostalgic “The Forever Afternoon” offers calm after the storm before the robust “Lands End” brings forth the bluesy wave.

But then, “Not Thinking Twice” unplugs to take its country frivolity to the skies until “Arrival” starts to close the conceptual circle by sculpting a faux-orchestral soundscape and building the dynamic space for “Almost Home” to simply dance in the raga-tinged ether. So yes, there’s nothing foolish or inconsistent about this wonderful album, the record occupying a long-deserved place in sonic cosmos.

*****

December 8, 2024