The Departing of a Dream Vol. III: Juliet

"You can't hold on to things," Loren Connors says. "With great happiness comes great sorrow." So brings us to the spectrum that is Departing of a Dream Vol. III: Juliet. Like the previous volumes, Juliet is a tribute of sorts; and here the focus is clearly love, the kind of love willing to face desolation and ultimately death. Recorded in Connors's Brooklyn apartment, his electric guitar emits a pulsing web of blues notes that settle against the utterly intimate human ambience of a creaking chair, tumbling objects, smoke curled absence and his signature canvas of tape hiss. The story of Juliet and her Romeo is told in a lyrical outpouring that Connors has rarely shown in recent years, a style associated which his Rooms (1990) and Evangeline (1999) albums. Though the 20-minute album opener contains a devastating core of mire and foreboding that only Connors can create.

"Connors' gentle guitar music conjures up ghosts, representations of loneliness, sadness and introspection. Gentle mists hover above the unkempt gravestones of the disenfranchised souls of love lost. " -- Spencer Grady, Dusted