Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts album review — vibrant and original album from Macarthur genius

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Award-winning guitarist and Macarthur fellow Mary Halvorson returns to the brassy textures and sinewy rhythms that made her 2022 album Amaryllis such a success. In her latest release, About Ghosts, the improvised and pre-configured are perfectly aligned. Bendy lines and left-field Brooklyn angularities sit alongside pulsy rhythms and emotional warmth. But now two saxophones add an extra sheen to the original sextet’s brass and a soulful lustre joins her already rich arranger’s palette.

Halvorson’s guitar style takes established practices and then adds disruptive pings, bendy chords and smooth lines that alter course. Her approach to composition is an equally rigorous balance of the tried and tested and off-the-wall. Sterling riffs have a military air, flutters of brass sit on fast brushwork swing and blousy saxophones get an acerbic brass response.

The set begins with “Full of Neon”: an ominous kaleidoscope of short stabs, discordant textures and overlapping lines. A soulful trombone solo is followed by heated tenor sax; the throb of counterpoint bass is constant until, finally, the piece evaporates into a haze of electronica. “Carved From” comes next, an up-tempo feature for guitar and alto sax. The floaty mist of “Eventidal” delivers vibraphone scuttles and Halvorson’s staccato slurs.

Elsewhere, the pithy tones of Immanuel Wilkins’ alto sax add to the headlong rush of “Absinthian”. “Amaranthine” is built on off-kilter snare-drum beats while “Polyhedral” has multiple edges and many rhythmic shapes. In contrast, the sedate “About Ghosts” delivers warm tenor sax and Ellingtonian flourishes.

The final track of this compelling eight-track set confirms both the vibrant ensemble discipline of her now road-tested band and the original stamp of Halvorson’s approach to composition. “Endmost” conjoins a bustle of bass with a surge of tenor sax, melancholic brass and sparse vibraphone interweave mysteriously, and the swoops and strums of Halvorson’s guitar are a delicate background shade.

★★★★☆

‘About Ghosts’ is released by Nonesuch