[music] Chris Whitley, Terra Incognita (1997)

The Work Group
Total Running Time - 46:04

Personnel
Chris Whitley - Vocals, guitars, banjo, bass; Dougie Bowne - Drums, deep and wide, keyboard, bass, and lime-green guitar solo; Steve Almass, Melvin Gibb, Matt Gruenberg, Alan Gevaert, Mike Watt - Bass; Daniel Lanois, Patricia Place, Louis Lepore Rasan Mo Domingo - Guitar; Trixie Whitley, Jesse Lee Montague - Backing vocals; Jason Frangos - Cello; Brady Blade - Drum loop; John Seymour - Organ

1. As Flat as the Earth
2. Automatic
3. Clear Blue Sky
4. Weightless
5. Power Down
6. On Cue
7. Immortal Blues
8. Cool Wooden Crosses
9. Still Point
10. Gasket
11. One Long Day
12. Aerial
13. Alien


The third album from Houston's Chris Whitley has been described as a sort of middle ground between his debut, Living With The Law, which was somewhere close to traditional folk, and 1994's blistering Din of Ecstasy. While I haven't actually heard Living With The Law, I am a big fan of Din, and based on that, this assessment seems accurate, at least as a short description of this effort

While Din of Ecstasy was almost all electric guitar from Whitley, Terra Incognita, features a much broader palette of stringed sounds, with more acoustic guitar, dobro, and even banjo on some tracks. When applied in a more conventional way, as in the adult alternative singles like "Automatic" and "Power Down," this doesn't have much effect other than making Whitley sound like a typical, albeit very good, folk-rock singer. It's on tracks like "Still Point" where the melding of these instruments with a heavier rock aesthetic gives Whitley a more unique and engaging platform. The steady rhythm of a banjo gives this song a propulsive, train-like groove that lies somewhere in a large gray area between folk and rock, which is countered by the simple rhymes of Whitley's lilting vocals.

There's something in Whitley's use of different grooves like this that set this album apart from Din. While that album seemed to revel in a sort of slash-and-burn straight-up rock style, some tracks on Terra Incognita sound almost experimental, from a rhythmic standpoint. "Clear Blue Sky" employs a slow, murky shuffle that gives the song a dark, earthy feel, and "Aerial" features a gritty, country-esque take on funk, helped along by some snaky basslines from Melvin Gibb, who also holds down the fort on the chugging "Still Point." "On Cue" breaks down to something that almost sounds like a slow hip-hop groove at one point, and "Gasket" is a rock-country-blues shuffle rave-up, never feeling quite comfortable within any one of those styles. All in all, Whitley seems torn between a part of him that writes radio-friendly, folk-rock style songs and another part that wants to push toward the extremes of the style he plays. This isn't to say that he can't do both, although I personally hope that the heavier, more experimental side wins out in the long run, as those moments are ultimately the most satisfying (for me) on this record.