Steve Tibbetts: Natural Causes (ECM 270 2164)
Listening to the “Zen guitarist from Minnesota”, as his publicity calls him, always returns me to my student days in the  early 1970s, with all its resonations of missed lectures, lounging around barefoot with Hendrix posters on the wall, joss sticks burning and all kinds of hippy talk going on. Along with the underground rock, we listened to a bit of what was to become marketed as world music 20 years later and also some acoustic music from the likes of Leo Kotke and Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.

After his very electric album A Man About A Horse eight years ago, Tibbett has returned to acoustic instruments for this thoughtful, meandering album. He concentrates on acoustic guitars, though throws in touches of piano, kalimba and bouzouki – a particularly restrained instrumentation list for Tibbetts and one which I view with relief. I sometimes found his albums sounded too much like a sampler of every exotic instrument on the planet.

Another welcome sign is that the man who so often works alone has called in Marc Anderson to play percussion, including steel drums and gongs. It’s good to hear some interaction between musicians, I feel – somehow leaves the listener feeling he is part of a wider conversation and not just being talked at.

The instrument Tibbetts uses most here is his father’s Martin D-12 20 12-string, and he declares as his aim the desire to “find a voice in well-played single-string lines and say more with less”. It certainly feels that by uses a reduced instrumental palette and by linking the tracks with similar themes and musical language, he has indeed found more to say and communicated more with this listener than has sometimes been the case in the past.

A refreshing listen which slows one down and focusses both mind and spirit in a kind of musical meditation.