A unique, atmospheric album from California’s Donald Beaman.
Californian Donald Beaman returns with his fifth album ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’. In this release, we are treated to a low-key, understated – almost drifting – set of songs mostly written and recorded in Beaman’s makeshift home studio with the help of producer and bandmate Kirt Lind. There are no traditional verses, choruses, or bridges to speak of in any of the tracks. Instead, what you get is a collection of evocative scenes and vivid emotions sung to sparse musical arrangements in Beaman’s distinctive sonorous tones.
The album kicks off with ‘Glass Bottom Boat‘. Its drone-like, repeating guitar figures fed through a cocktail of effects pedals perfectly complement the floating, ethereal lyrics. After the dreamy start, the jazzy ‘Paper Screen’ brings you gently back to earth with the introduction of a fuller band sound.
The title track is a regular feature of Beaman’s live show and has a more polished feel to it than other tracks. ‘Old Universe‘, provides a gentle shift in pace, the brushwork on the drums and a jaunty bass carries this compelling song about eye-contact along nicely.
Everyday spaces are a recurring theme in Beaman’s landscape. Familiar, often communal, areas such as stairwells (‘Awhile‘) and hallways (‘Valley Floor‘) become brooding, uncanny places where walls simultaneously close in and move further apart. In ‘Makeshift Room‘, the room is reduced to an inescapable corner someone has painted themselves into and the claustrophobia deepens in ‘Usual Phantom‘, where a “narrow room” quickly reduces to the narrator’s whole world.
The album opens with languid waves and “pure sunlight” and ends with cold moonlight reflected in a knife blade as the closing track ‘Bamboo‘ returns to the same hypnotic looping style of ‘Glass Bottom Boat’ – it is a very satisfactory coda to a unique album.
