With a folk-rock bent and an ear for the mystical, US singer-songwriter <person>Steve Gunn</person> has a staunch CV as a right-hand man. His many solo recordings have kept pace with simpatico support roles – in Philadelphian slacker-sage <person>Kurt Vile</person>’s band the Violators, or collaborating, as on 2013’s Golden Gunn duo album (with Hiss Golden Messenger). Having previously produced <person>Michael Chapman</person>, <person>Gunn</person> rejoins the veteran on his most recent tune, After All This Time.
The Unseen in Between (what a title) kicks Gunn up a gear, redeploying his influences into a left-field but welcoming whole, pearlescent enough as a background listen, but sufficiently arresting to make you stop and appreciate <person>Gunn</person>’s chops. British folk-rock, Indian ragas and 60s pop inform New Familiar. The Smiths-y Vagabond, meanwhile, finds Gunn duetting with Espers’ Meg Baird on an atmospheric road movie of a country tune (“took a job and cleaned some tombstones”) lit up by <person>Gunn</person>’s unostentatious guitar work.
Then there’s the unadorned Stonehurst Cowboy, which hymns his recently deceased father, and the Philadelphia neighbourhood where he grew up. The video finds <person>Gunn</person> in graffiti-strewn London, underlining, perhaps, the British roots of his Americana, and the continuity of the troubadour tradition.