ROY MONTGOMERY & MARTHA SKYE MURPHY Nebular LP (AD 93)

Kinda nuts that I have to keep telling people about how Roy Montgomery’s 14 albums over the past decade are all knockouts, a third-phase deluge of chorus pedal sting, like someone playing the guitar with a fretboard made of that silver screen in the outside of a window A/C unit, with a razor and Kevlar gloves, that grows to 36x36 stories of mournful emotion and rueful reflection, like the alien in Jordan Peele’s “Nope” towards the end. I’m not as familiar with Murphy’s work and from the casual spin I gave her last one Um it was off on tangents pretty far from here. What’s here is Roy on guitar and organ, and Martha’s often-wordless voice woven up, around, between and through his storm, just geniusly layered to give the duo that sense of infinite reach, almost like a next form of player/creative has been unlocked. Mary Lattimore fans it out even more on her harp during closer “At Dusk,” as if you needed any more incentive to bring this out. Roy Montgomery has continued to be one of the handful of New Zealanders in on that nation’s singular underground, and after 50 years is one of the few left plying the hammered delicacy of that which powered Xpressway, and on world stages. What’s this guy left us, just for starts – Pin Group? Dadamah? Temple IV? Why wouldn’t you be following his every move?

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