RACHEL GRIMES - Book Of Leaves

The essential linchpin of an extraordinary artistic experience that took its very name from her, pianist Rachel Grimes returns to the scene after a long period of relative silence, barring a few sporadic appearances on other artists' albums, under the name Rachel's. She does so unexpectedly, with the class and discretion that have always been her hallmark, with a solo piano album — her first released purely under her own name — put out by the small Canadian label Ruminance.

The six years separating this new work from the last Rachel's album, "Systems/Layers", have nonetheless done nothing to diminish the charm of the notes skilfully distilled by Rachel Grimes's piano, now the bare, unadorned protagonists of an extremely intimate album that for the first time allows us to admire her personality outside the wider context of the band.

"Book Of Leaves" is also not without contributions from old friends, since the Louisville-based pianist is once again backed by the production of Bob Weston, and some of the tracks collected on this work had already been included in the soundtrack to the documentary film "Rotating Mirror", directed by Greg King, himself a former member of the Rachel's collective.

Yet every element extraneous to the artist's inspiration and the sound of her piano fails to overshadow the intense minimalism of the fourteen fragments, averaging a little over two minutes each, that make up the album's mosaic.

Working alone with her instrument, Rachel Grimes traces only a few spare brushstrokes on an immaculate canvas, which often achieve a tangible sense of emptiness, mostly sought through carefully crafted temporal suspensions between notes, yet rendered as wholly complete, self-sufficient pieces — pieces mostly geared toward the graceful, nocturnal romanticism of barely-touched keys, but also capable of arching into restrained surges and even unexpected uptempo bursts (as on "Dear Companion", inspired by the traditional English ballad of the same name).

The piano's only accompaniment comes from occasional field recordings, gathered by Grimes herself and juxtaposed with the utmost discretion, bolstering with barely perceptible tremors the gaps between notes whose iterations almost always dissolve into fragile melodies or end up chasing each other through restless emotional and timbral modulations in tireless flux.

Clear proof that essentiality is something quite different from monotony when shaped with such rare naturalness by an artist's mastery, "Book Of Leaves" reveals itself to be far more than a simple collection of background pieces or sketches for compositions yet to come. The dense solemnity of nearly every track makes them fully realized miniatures that, without any self-referential classicist pretension, survey a wide range of images and sensations, crystallized by the sinuous, measured expressiveness of an artist for whom stylistic categories - and the very passing of time - are entirely relative concepts.

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14/10/2009