For an album that essentially had to be coaxed out of him, Rob Smith’s solo debut, Salt Star, is an absolute gem. Best known as the drummer and co-architect behind well-loved New York groups such as Rhyton, Pigeons, Gray/Smith, and Animal! Surrender, Smith considers himself more of a “support and accompaniment type”, someone who would rather be in a band.
Producer Jason Meagher coaxed Smith into his Black Dirt Studio in New York, and from a single winter weekend of recording, with no rehearsal and no second takes, emerged what Smith calls “a small world of some of my best friends in miniature, a whole cloudy ecosystem, forever animated inside a mirrored bottle”. The record may have been in limbo due to the studio’s closure and the pandemic, but the six songs on Salt Star are well worth the wait.
The songs on this relatively brief but deeply intoxicating record seem to inhabit their own individual worlds, as the styles tend to shift effortlessly. Still, they all have a luminous quality, sparse but deeply felt. Opening with a swirling, kaleidoscopic cover of the Carter Family’s “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone”, Rob Smith, who sings, and plays acoustic guitar and drums throughout the album, takes cues from from the psych-folk stylings of the Grateful Dead, as his vocals sound uncannily like the aching croon of Jerry Garcia, and the low-key, gently rambling instrumentation, aided by Pat Gubler’s harp, Jimy SeiTang’s Alembic bass, and Barry Walker, Jr’s keening pedal steel give the feel of a deep cut from Europe ’72.
Gubler’s dreamy, processed guitar and Walker’s extended, ethereal pedal steel runs on the radiant “Aquarelle” seem to bring together chamber pop and Americana, aided by the fact that the music seems to take center stage over Smith’s vocals and gallops toward a low-key extended jam. Helen Rush’s lead vocal turn on the mysterious, floating title track brings a welcome new dimension (with Smith adding harmonies), and Gubler’s recorder is a unique, enticing touch.
The record’s musical centerpiece, however, might be “Waccamaw Symph”, an eight-minute instrumental anchored by SeiTang’s hypnotic bass, Gubler’s exotic sitar runs, a glorious psychedelic backdrop from Smith (credited as a “space echo”), lead acoustic guitar from David Cavallo, and some gorgeous saxophone work Wednesday Knudsen, essentially framed as an extended jam that fuses Rob Smith’s psych-folk tendencies with a lovely experimental jazz vibe.
Meanwhile, Gubler’s rich, evocative electric piano gives the shimmering “Ring Around the Cypress” a distinctly soulful gospel feel, shifting gears yet again as Smith and his co-conspirators continue to bring fascinating musical ideas to the table. Salt Star closes as it began, with another cover, this time the Roches‘ unimpeachable “Hammond Song”. Forgoing the otherworldly harmonies of the original arrangements, Smith instead gives the song a loose, jazzy feel thanks to Knudsen’s saxophone and vocal assistance from her and Rush. This more low-key approach gives the song room to breathe and adds a new dimension to an already elegant composition.
For an album that wouldn’t have happened without the gentle prodding of friends, Rob Smith’s Salt Star is a brief, bright light of emotion and musical interplay, offering a variety of arrangements and instrumentation that speaks to the assemblage of talent as well as Smith’s unique, consistently engaging vision.