ED ASKEW - The Final Painting

Ed Askew has slipped away on tiptoe, without making a sound. The American painter and songwriter passed away on January 5, 2025, leaving us a constellation of small folk gems capable of shaping the imagination of entire generations of musicians. To talk about him is to evoke kindred spirits like Bill Fay and Tucker Zimmerman: reclusive poets whom time has taught us to love, rediscovered through furtive glances and stage returns lit by an inspiration that never dimmed.

With "The Final Painting", the curtain falls on the sonic universe of the artist from Stamford. Nine songs recorded with the serene awareness of a last testament, final confessions from a man who made nonconformity his existential compass.
The burning vulnerability of these tracks doesn't lie only in the words or in the harmonies, made denser and graver, but pulses above all in that resigned, aching voice which, like a blow to the heart, plunges the listener into a sweet emotional daze.
The harmonica, which tries to lighten the leaden pace of "Bacon & Eggs", and the embrace of the organ, which converses with the sax and the electric embroidery of a guitar on the splendid "Winter Song", are the chiaroscuro of a work that breathes nostalgia and regret, without ever giving in to the blackmail of pain.

Bill Callahan has called Askew's music sacred and primordial, guardian of a baroque elegance that blossoms amid icy piano arrangements. Callahan himself is one of the many fellow travelers summoned for this final ceremony, almost an indistinguishable shadow in the hushed noir duet "Someone".
More than the bold architectures of albums like "London" or "Sleeping With Angels", this farewell ties back to "For The World", the album that in 2013 returned his voice to the world under the production guidance of Jerry David DeCicca, called back here to oversee "The Final Painting".
Eve Searls is entrusted with the most generous counterpoint, a second voice that enriches the romantic "Long Night" and fades away in the closing "Nightingale". Sharon Van Etten, meanwhile, gets the task of dueting with Askew on the intense "GrayAir-o-Plane".
But it's in the melancholy jazz-noir of "Lost In The Kitchen" that the secret heart of the album lies: faced with the aching beauty of that voice and the ancient grace of his exquisite piano touch, it will be impossible to hold back tears before the last note dissolves into silence.

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04/09/2026