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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Trained at the New England Conservatory as an improvising guitarist,
Wendy Eisenberg initially played in the
Birthing Hips, documented on the cassettes No Sorry (2016) and Urge To Merge (2017), before releasing her solo album
Time Machine (HEC Tapes, 2017 - Feeding Tube, 2018), which contains
highly original bedroom pop for voice and guitar.
New Hampshire is one of the most original takes on Nick Drake's minimal folk,
Oval is a bold venture into blues-jazz,
and there are shades of bossanova in Postal Man and Brain Today.
She recorded
The Machinic Unconscious (Tzadik, 2018) in a
trio with bassist Trevor Dunn of Mr Bungle and jazz drummer Ches Smith
(notably Frayed Knotted And Unshorn, Mycoaelia and Zoning),
and at the same time released the much more interesting
solo acoustic improvisations of Its Shape Is Your Touch (2018),
notably the
disfigured impressionism of
the eight-minute Early November,
the petulant dissonance of All Saints
and the decomposed blues of Sawn.
Here she explored the confluced of
Arto Lindsay's no-wave guitar with
the guitar music of John Fahey and Leo Kottke.
She then regressed to her original bedroom-pop for voice and guitar on the
break-up album Dehiscence (2020),
with the simple and gentle Yellow Hand, the elegant polyphony of
Now Proceed, the Joni Mitchell-esque Write Basic,
and the droll Versions of Myself.
At the same time she recorded the six guitar improvisations later collected on
Cellini's Halo (2021), notably the
frantic ten-minute A0 (possibly her peak as an improviser) and the
nine-minute fantasia A Fractured Cluster.
Auto (Ba Da Bing, 2020) enhanced her bedroom-pop with the discreet
electronic arrangements of producer Nick Zanca and with a rhythm section, resulting sometimes in a convoluted form of post-post-rock (I Don't Want To,
The Star,
and especially The Moon) and elsewhere in atmospheric ballads (like the nocturnal Urge and the lugubrious Slow Down).
The banjo songs of Bent Ring (Dear Life, 2021) hardly match the
brainy achievements of previous albums
and tend to drift into cheerful lullabies (Mental Images, Analogies, Evening Song).
Bloodletting (2021) documents a 2019 performance during which she indulged in lengthy improvisations on both guitar and banjo.
She also played in
Strictly Missionary with saxophonist and keyboardist Chris Pitsiokos, bassist Richard Lenz, drummer Kevin Murray and percussionist Nick Neuburg, documented on
Heisse Scheisse (2021).
She also recorded
Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound, 2021)
with a trio named Editrix. The album's post-rock songs are an apt display for
her truculent guitar style, notably in the
metal onslaught of Bad Breath and in the truculent jazz-folk-rock of
The History of Dance.
She's, however, a very limited vocalist, and her vocals are a major drawback
on the music.
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