Time is glass

As with all Greek myths, there are many conflicting versions of Hephaestus' story, but in each, he was banished from heaven and forced to toil at his craft on Earth before he could go home, transformed into a craftsman god. I'm sure Ben Chasny wasn't making such lofty claims when he named a song after Hephaestus on his new album, but the parallels are clear.

When Six Organs of Admittance was a few years old and still quite divided from Leo Kottke and the No-Neck Blues Band, Chasny left Northern California as a tight-fisted guitarist with a penchant for Asian modes, lo-fi noise and the occult ancient times. After 20 years on the road, he returned to Humboldt as a more measured songwriter and a superior sound artist with a wide range. Alone, he drew the ancient redwoods around him like a curtain and set to work Time is glass. Instead of adding new experiments to those spread over his dozens of releases, he continued them, using all the forces he had committed, from the special vantage point from which it all began.

“Hephaestus” is just the last time Chasny has set an orchestra for the Greek marble – he memorably put Actaeon, who was turned into a deer and eaten by his dogs for watching Artemis bathe, in his first song Bright Night— and it's probably for the best. On Time is glass, the song is a dramatic outlier: a musky, lithe, tremulous drone track that reliably sparks flake off a divinely vast anvil. But that's what passes for a back-to-basics Americana record in Chasny's expansive world, and most of the songs sink into deep acoustic roots before expanding in a pleasing way, either subtle or surprising.

The bookends, 'The Mission' and 'New Year's Song', strip his songs down to their rawest bits – room tone chirping like cicadas, your ear right over the hole in the guitar and a thin, sweet, slightly distant voice that hovers from somewhere high. Playing them four or five times with some atmospheric interludes would have made an excellent record. But Chasny never settled for finesse, and with his unusual combination of restlessness and focus, he continues to blaze new trails of connection between leafy, well-worn modes.

This exploration unfolds with intense patience, and each song stands out a little further. An electric guitar shines like a light through the clouds on “Slip Away” before “Theophany Song” reminds us exactly why Chasny was once so connected to Devendra Banhart, and then the forge heats up for a spectacular second half. “My Familiar” is elemental torture until an electric guitar appears, the hushed riffs and leads sailing tightly structured in evidence. It continues the strange chimera of Steve Stevens and Bill Frisell solos that Chasny conjured up on his last album, The Covered Sea. “Summer's Last Rays” looks like a pure technical showcase of fans, jumps and trills until a space-occupying sort of reverse, gurgling effects begins to pull in the relentless figures, belying the rigid description of linear time. The two and a half minutes of mournful acoustic spray that opens “Spinning in a River” set up a drop so good, so inconceivable yet fitting, that I really don't want to spoil it.