A year and a half after his remarkable live album, Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind, Kelly Joe Phelps returns to the studio with his restless, searing, intimate vision and remarkable skills as both an instrumentalist and a songwriter. While Phelps employs several musicians from his past, such as guitarist Steve Dawson, fiddler Jesse Zubot, and keyboardist Chris Gestrin (all of whom played on 1983's Slingshot Professionals), there's nothing here that's reminiscent of that set. First and foremost, Phelps is a songwriter here. Phelps looks at his subjects, such as the lover in Spanish Hands, from the side. He communicates directly while peeling back the layers of appearance, and describes her as both "a gentle bell" and "a cat's eye." This is the songwriter as poet, heard over and again as the subtly shaded instrumental backdrops caress his words lovingly, letting them roll out unencumbered. In the opener, Crow's Nest, his acoustic guitar is unassuming as he trots out the words "Come along to the riverside, sit down now/I just want to hear somebody else whine/If you've got tomorrow, I've got a blade/We can dig a hole into an old book/We can keep our secrets there." He allows the truth of desperation, love, and the willingness of other possibilities all to emerge before Zubot floats his way in and adorns that guitar with some lonesome balladry of his own. On The Anvil, Wallace Stevens' ghost comes to visit in Phelps imagery, metaphors, and similes, accompanied by a shuffling snare and a pump organ as he sings "There is an eye walking curiously/By the campground, the bedside night stand/My leg bones feel weary yet walk on they will/Holding for wheels and gravy/On a plate full of nothing but shaking my head/With a side bowl of nothing to do." His rhymes touch the inside, looking at difficulty and confusion from a nearly wistful place, longing for he knows not what. But it's Phelps use of the banjo on Tunesmith Retrofit that is the album's biggest surprise. (Before recording this set, he hadn't played one in 20 years.) He doesn't try to play bluegrass, nor does he try to haunt the ghosts of those players who have gone before.

1		Crow's Nest
2		The Anvil
3		Spanish Hands
4		Plumb Line
5		Scapegoat
6		Big Shaky
7		Tight To The Jar
8		Macdougal
9		Loud As Ears
10		Red Light Nickel
11		Handful Of Arrows
12		Tunesmith Retrofit