For those not in the know, the brand new album The Great Mirage has just been released and is a quite wondrous two guitar collaboration between Joel Harrison and Anthony Pirog.

Pirog and Harrison tend to finish each other sentences when they play. Twenty five years separate them in age, and yet they seem to have common ancestry. Both are from Wash. D.C., both love jazz, rock, fusion, avant garde, folk, funk, and country music, and both often do all of it all at once.

On The Great Mirage, each composed and arranged music for the session, the music caterwauls between heavy and light, really loud and really soft, gorgeous, spiky, grooving and free. The record reaches towards a 21st century essay in what the guitar can do. The band’s sense of joy and adventure is palpable as they extend their range and reach deep into American guitar history and future.

The rhythm section adds a tremendous amount to the pieces. Allison Miller, herself a D.C. kid, wallops and caresses the drums with authority and finesse. Stephan Crump, who is better known for his upright playing, grooves like a modern day Jamerson, and then puts a delicate bow around a lyrical series of modern jazz chord changes.

1. The Great Mirage (5:26)
2. Critical Conversation (3:49)
3. There’s Never Enough Time (4:27)
4. Mortgage on My Soul (4:20)
5. Desert Solitaire (4:110
6. It Slipped Through My Fingers (3:21)
7. The Last Rose of Summer (1:15)
8. I’ll See You in the Shining World (ded. Sonam Tarjee) (6:29)
9. East Hurley (4:58)
10. Clarksdale (6:21)
11. Buffalo Heart (5:40)

This magnificently stylized new recording opens on the guitar-infused, Old West-hued, staggered ambiance of the titular The Great Mirage and the synth-laden fuzz of Critical Conversation and then brings us the languishing beauty within There’s Never Enough Time and the colliding musical landscapes and instruments that bring forth the explosive Mortgage on My Soul, before we get the low key balladry of Desert Solitaire.

Along next we quickly discover the rhythmically sumptuous growth of the rising It Slipped Through My Fingers and the short, but sweet preciseness showcased within The Last Rose of Summer, and they are in turn backed by the luxuriantly opulent I’ll See You in the Shining World, the drum-led, funky hipsway of East Hurley, the album rounding out on the veritably shimmering Clarksdale, closing on the harder guitar grind of the blues-jazz piece Buffalo Heart.

Musicians:
Joel Harrison and Anthony Pirog: guitars
Stephan Crump: bass
Allison Miller: drums
Bruce Katz: Hammond B-3 on track 10

Official Purchase Link

www.joelharrison.com