It is always tempting to look for signs in the last work of an artist, and on this occasion it would be useless to resist. John Fahey, the pioneering primitivist of the folk-blues guitar, died two years ago, at 60, and on these, his final recordings, he seems to have been searching for some sort of resolution.
Fahey's explorations of old blues, folk and country tunes and the Episcopalian hymnal were usually distinguished by a spiky stubbornness, like a series of unfinished arguments. Here, in seven solo items and one trio piece, he delves far beneath the surface of his material to produce performances of enormous emotional impact, their power intensified by constant hesitations and uncertainties that seem the product of intense thought rather than technical frailty.
And not since Albert Ayler, 40 years ago, has anyone drawn so much blood from Gershwin's Summertime, the riveting highlight of an elegantly packaged memorial.
