Having served his apprenticeship with Chico Hamilton, Ron Carter, and Charles Lloyd, Szabo gained wider prominence with 1966's Jazz Raga. The '60s found him producing more commercially oriented material with Jim Keltner and Hal Gordon. Szabo's method—state opening theme, extemporise making full use of drones and false fingerings—is well suited to these cover versions ("Dear Prudence", "Some Velvet Morning"). Although occasionally straying into blandness, this is mostly lounge-psych of the highest order.
Mugison's follow-up to last year's acclaimed Lonely Mountain debut is the score to a Fridrik Thor Fridriksson film, recorded in a church and in his girlfriend's mum's front room in remote Western Iceland. Fridriksson (whose last, Falcons, boasted a song by Keith Carradine) has also used Sigur Rós and Psychic TV in the past (on Angels Of The Universe), so this isn't (quite) as wilfully obscure as you might assume. It's very rough, broken and sketchy, with minimalist acoustic guitars probing spectres of melodies till they crystallise (or don't).
Sometime bartender, midwife and reverend, O'Connor's true calling may lie as a remarkable interpreter of song. Though recent years have found her adding dewy vocal harmonies for Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire (and Mavis Staples), her solo debut is long overdue. A brace of impressive originals—"My Backyard", "Tonight"—are whispers of classic honky-tonk, but she truly shines on covers of James (Squirrel Nut Zippers) Mathus' "Bottoms" and "Nightingale", twisting each into the kind of lovelorn ballad Alison Krauss would kill for.
