The Patience Fader

Description

Mark Nelson, aka Pan American, distills his romantic minimalism to us in an icy breath on *The Patience Fader*, his new album for the Kranky label. On this suite of guitar instrumentals, accented with lap steel, harmonica, and twilight atmospheres, the strings spread out and shimmer in elegant waves, swept by the wind, a guitar style described by Brian Eno as Duane Eddy playing Erik Satie. These are elegies as much as songs, lulling themselves into currents of beauty and mourning. Mark Nelson evokes the notion of lighthouse music, of the gleam projected from a fixed post, sending a signal to help others navigate dangerous rocks and currents. Composed during the very isolated summer of 2020, the pieces took shape as meditations on roots and mourning, trying to connect with those deep, hidden rivers that lead to a greater sense of community. There is something timeless, bruised, and American in this music, both exiled and pious, the ghost of Rust Belt regions and Dust Bowls looming in the deep twilight of the horizon.