Last week, PopMatters premiered a new track by Jesse Harris and Star Rover, “Catch the Ash”. Now, we’re proud to premiere the full album by Harris and his collaborators, No Wrong No Right. Star Rover is but one of many collaborators on this recording; Harris also collaborated with renowned guitarist Julian Lage, notably on the gorgeous highlight “Kafiristan” (co-written with John Zorn). Drawing inspiration from Neil Young’s After the Goldrush album, Harris mixes together quiet acoustic numbers, full-band tunes with Star Rover, the aforementioned guitar duets with Lage, and a smattering of pretty instrumentals into a successful whole. No Wrong No Right marks Harris’ 13th solo effort, and by the sound of things he hasn’t lost any artistic energy, and won’t be losing any soon.
Harris tells PopMatters more about his new album: “Each of my albums starts with a musical idea, my having a collection of songs and being inspired by musicians I’d like to collaborate with. In this case, I happened to be playing and hanging out a lot with the band Star Rover (Jeremy Gustin and Will Graefe). From the first moment we played together, it felt like a band. Their duo focuses on instrumental music, so I wanted that to be a part of what we did together, which led to several instrumentals on the album. Also their approach to playing — which is both supportive and experimental — challenged the music in a way I found exciting and wanted to capture on record.
“As for the songs themselves, it’s rare that I conceptualize a theme for a group of songs. Instead, I write each song individually and find that themes emerge naturally, because I always record songs that have been written during a specific period of time. Another musical element I wanted to include on No Wrong No Right was my collaboration with guitarist Julian Lage. We play shows together as a duo, and representing that on this album was important to me as well. Plenty of other friends helped out, too, like Mauro Refosco, CJ Camerieri, Sofia rei, Margaret Glaspy, and Larry Goldings.”
No Wrong No Right is out on 10 February via Dangerbird. You can purchase the digital album via iTunes.