Mike Gordon: Inside In

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * *)

Gordon's name may have passed you by. You are forgiven. His career as bassist in Phish doesn't command attention down this way and it's likely the oddball but interesting album he did last year with Leo Kottke (the unique, therefore ill-titled Clone) flew beneath your scanner as it did for most people. You may also have missed the news brief when he was found backstage after a concert in August by former Grateful Dead members with a 9-year-old girl. The girl's family and Gordon issued a joint statement that it was all an "unfortunate misunderstanding".

It's safe to assume Gordon hasn't had any kind of profile but in some circles - where bent, funky country with nimble percussion and ADHD syndrome means something - this debut solo release will be greeted with amusement and mild acclaim.

From the finger-snap bass lines through the keening and slippery steel guitar melodies sliding across the top and into his dark, multi-tracked vocals, Gordon immediately tips your gyroscope. And makes some unusual headphone moments.

At times the music is country-meets-jazz - those who know Bill Frissell will be at home - but at others he sounds like a somewhat more overtly humorous, absurdist David Byrne with his oblique takes on life. He does mock-bluegrass and urban back-porch country-rock; the dream-like The Lesson evokes those drifting melodies of Brian Eno (if Eno had been born in West Virginia); and he can conjure up Violent Femmes acousto-rock. Couch Lady is like an acoustic Meat Puppets where you provide the psychedelic electric guitar. There are places where the horns could have come from a Robert Wyatt album and elsewhere Gordon plays the West African djembe.

Lyrically, it's mostly nonsense but it's a benign and often quiet musical world where Gordon calls up an impressive number of fellow players: country fiddle legend Vassar Clements, steel guitarist Buddy Cage from New Riders of the Purple Sage, banjo-player Bela Fleck and some Flecktones, Col Bruce Hampton (of the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Fiji Mariners and other oddly named jamming 70s-styled rock bands) and others.

It might not be the most coherent, immediately engaging or conveniently categorisable album around, but here's a guarantee: You'll smile, your bemused friends over for the barbecue will nod approvingly and ask who it is - and none of you will hear anything like it until his next one.

Label: Ryko