Chris Pellnat - Cairn (2024)

I wrote about Chris Pellnat's two previous solo albums - Rain (2020) and Go (2022) - because they deserved the accolades given to them, as does his latest collection, Cairn, a wonderfully unique ten-song set released earlier this Spring.
 
 As I've written in the past, Pellnat's music is hard to categorize. He can be a straight up singer-songwriter with inciteful lyrics, or he can rock tastefully - and even quietly - without falling into the often derided soft-rock genre.

Pellnat plays most of the album's instruments himself. “Ship on the Horizon,” uses dulcimer and accordion, and "Better" features some tasteful banjo. "Child's Play," "The World Won't Let Me Believe" and "Dragonflies" have rocking electric guitar solos. "The Final Wager" is pure acoustic folk music. Musical diversity is Pellnat's name of the game.

"Forest Giants" uses a drum machine and auto-tuned vocals, technologies that thankfully seldom appear in the upstate New Yorker's music. Like me, Pellnat isn't a big fan of those digital sounds, but he proves that when applied judiciously an artist can make them work. He told Bloggerhythms that auto-tune "can be used in non-cringy ways to create an intentionally stylized vocal sound."  Fortunately, in Pellnat's case, the machines don't become the band. They're simply another instrument used to enhance his unique arrangement. That should scare synth kings like Depeche Mode, who should always sound this tasteful.

In a lot of cases Pellnat's lyrics are heavier than the music. He tries to be cryptic on the only openly political track, "After Everything That You've Done," but you know who he's singing about without even naming the protagonist. The thinly veiled mystery adds a little fun to the otherwise serious track.

Cairn is Pellnat's third album in a row with a single word as the title. A cairn is "a pile of stones, to signify a memorial, mark a trail, or to convey “I was here” to passers-by."  The album cover was photographed in Maine.   

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