"A Trick of the Light" is the new album by Chicago-based guitarist / composer / bandleader Eli Winter. Winter’s 2022 self-titled album, also for Three Lobed, found the bandleader often ceding control of his improvisation-inclusive songs to his committed collaborators. On "A Trick of the Light," he has further refined this approach, resulting in an elegantly crafted and vibrant collection that finds Winter, as both composer and bandleader, at the height of his powers.

The album opens with an arrangement of “Arabian Nightingale” from Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s seminal reunion album, "El Corazón." Winter previously recorded the tune as a blues-y and almost nakedly vulnerable solo piece for Aquarium Drunkard’s Lagniappe Sessions series. The full band version heard on "A Trick of the Light," which is nearly 14 minutes longer, audaciously sets an extremely high bar for the remainder of the record, trading the pianistic minimalism of the Cherry-Blackwell original for a suite of dazzling intensity. At one point following saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher’s lively and exuberant solo, the group whips up a sonic storm; this dramatic moment, however, is more devilish fake-out than denouement. Just when you think the song has reached its climax, the band locates the eye of the storm, setting the scene for an exhilarating middle section that conjures Ry Cooder sitting in with Natural Information Society before concluding with a coda that then returns to the irresistible Ornette-like motif.

The plaintive and sumptuous “For a Fallen Rocket” foregrounds Sam Wagster’s wooing pedal steel swaying like a kite over a lush bed of piano, acoustic guitar, harmonium, percussion, and galloping bass. More than any other piece on the record, “For a Fallen Rocket” reminds us that Winter is, at heart, a melodist. In recent years, Winter has increasingly seemed to favor the electric guitar, but his sole appearance on acoustic here is a good reminder of why he is frequently evoked in conversations alongside peers like Daniel Bachman and Nathan Salsburg: Winter’s playing is as melodic and winsome as the former and as speckless and crisp as the latter.

“Cracking the Jaw” reprises somewhat the muscle of the album’s epic opening track. Here, the prodigally talented self-taught guitarist who typically eschews minor keys rather uncharacteristically allows room for some creeping pathos. Throughout, the distinctions between Winter and his supporting musicians continue to remain in flux, the elastic contributions of the sympathetic group resembling that of a single organism.

Carla Bley’s luminous “Ida Lupino”—one of the 20th century’s greatest songs—follows, and is given an abstract and concentrated reading that mischievously only hints at harmonic resolution, leaving space for the adroit ensemble to extract from the song a previously undetectable kind of drama. In a sense, Winter de-romanticizes the tune; his interpretation trades some of the original’s autumnal prettiness for a breezy, almost elemental simplicity that stresses timbre and rhythm. Andrew Scott Young’s pirouetting jabbing bass provides a tonal home base for Wagster, whose pedal steel carries the song’s melody with the same reliable subtlety and charm he exhibits throughout the record.

The album’s title track, featuring the spectral violin of Luke Sutherland alongside heavily processed contributions by guitarist David Grubbs and “lead bassist” Mike Watt, is a churning rubato that provides a welcome and natural contrast to much of the cheerful, plangent buoyancy of the album’s first half, a credit to Winter’s instincts as an arranger as well as his omnivorous musical tastes; this is, after all, a guitarist who cites both Pauline Oliveros and Judee Sill as influences. Drummer Tyler Damon emerges as the MVP here, his percolating rolls and accents making the case yet again that he may secretly be the American underground’s most creative and musically intelligent drummer working today.

The evocatively titled “Black Iris on a Burning Quilt” doubles down on the previous song’s epic tension with a cinematic and dreamlike conclusion that evokes—of all things—the yearning greyscale dread of post-hardcore. This unexpected pivot is cleverly subverted by Kiran Leonard’s cittern, Wagster’s pedal steel—which alternates throughout the piece between the noisy and the pastoral—and Alex McKenzie’s tastefully minimalist bass clarinet.

The phrase “a trick of the light” references an optical illusion that can appear to produce uncanny, transitory mirages. On balance, it’s a remarkably apt title for this album. Such phenomena can only occur, of course, under the most fragile and fleeting of conditions: when imagination collides with natural magic. Winter’s compositions and performances, alongside those of his fellow performers over these six songs, creates an audio equivalent—a situation where what you are hearing has somehow, perhaps alchemically, created something even greater and more extraordinary.

-James Toth, November 2024-