Nathan Salsburg, one of the leading lights of fingerstyle acoustic guitar, has long built his reputation on a kind of understated mastery of old-timey folk and traditional American music. While related to the American Primitive guitar movement, his music in both his solo career and as an able sideman for artists like Joan Shelley and Bonnie “Prince” Billy tends to be more melodic and meditative, moving with a patience and grace that feels more akin to English folk-revivalists than to the avant-adjacent work of someone like John Fahey.
But for all of his traditionalist undercurrents, Salsburg is also constantly seeking new conceptual horizons for his music, whether that means looping snippets of Yiddish and klezmer music to build new pieces in his Landwerk series, or riffing on an obscure Maryland post-punk tune (last year’s Hear the Children Sing the Evidence). His new album, Ipsa Corpora, feels in keeping with that bent, even as the various compositional fragments that comprise the single track on the album feel more in keeping with his concise 2018 LP Third.
