Mike Polizze's 2020 solo debut
Long Lost Solace Find was a triumph of subtlety. The Philadelphia musician's years of high-volume glory in his bands
Purling Hiss and the psychedelic
Birds of Maya didn't point to an understated masterpiece of low-key acoustic introspection, but that's what
Polizze delivered as a solo artist. In the years that followed, he again took up the mantle of feedback and power with both of his bands, but dialed it back down again for
Around Sound, his second album released under his own name and another exploration of the relaxed, acoustic-centered side of his songwriting. This set of songs has a slightly different overall tonality than
Polizze's last solo album. He flits between '60s U.K. folk-informed sounds on the circular meditation "It Goes Without Saying" and something closer to an unplugged reading of his usual rock songwriting on tracks like "Everybody I Know" and "Too Much Thinking." On songs like these, there's an undercurrent of Paisley Underground-styled dreaminess. Remarkably,
Polizze used no electric guitars anywhere on
Around Sound, but he still manages a few moments of feedback texture and buffers the acoustic instruments with Mellotron drones, vibraphone, and piano. There's a greater emphasis on fingerstyle guitar here as well, and
Polizze implements fingerpicking in a few different ways. The lazily strolling title track is based around simple fingerpicking runs, with an instrumentation that follows a blueprint akin to
Zuma-era
Neil Young and Crazy Horse. "Fast Blues" is more stripped-down, cycling between a few different
Fahey-esque guitar figures as
Polizze's vocals haunt the song like a low-energy ghost. The tune builds into a barnburning finale, but maintains its fingerstyle sound even as blasting, overdriven drums come in.
Around Sound has a slightly sharper edge than
Long Lost Solace Find, and this difference becomes clearer as it goes along.
Polizze's songs sound partially composed, partially like he's drifting through them and seeing what happens. Closing track "Four Celestions" gently winds the album down in a way that feels especially unmoored by strict songwriting. A fingerpicked guitar phrase wanders as multiple tracks of vocals, wordless expressions, and spoken segments overlap.
Polizze's range deepens even further on
Around Sound. He shows he's adept not just in the loud and the soft, but that he has layers of subdivisions in his musical personality, places that can be stormy, meditative, or quietly eruptive without ever plugging in an electric guitar. ~ Fred Thomas
