Paranoid Cat

VINYL FORMAT. Limited to 700 copies! Paranoid Cat is Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth's third solo album and first for Family Vineyard - a sprawling, harmonically-charged sidelong suite backed by a clutch of compositions merging raw and delicate American roots traditions. After more than a decade trotting the globe and recording with a mess of today's avant-garde greats, plus co-leading the brazenly absurd Peeesseye, Forsyth has arranged a full-band to accompany his electric six-string vision of interlocking arpeggios and maximalist peaks. The kaleidoscopic arrangements of Paranoid Cat are a leap from the stripped down attack on Forsyth's hotly acclaimed 2009 Dreams.

Paranoid Cat is the result of Forsyth performing with a band over recent years and bringing together drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin, pianist Hans Chew (member of D. Charles Speer & Helix), pedal steel player Marc Orleans (Sunburned and D. Charles Speer) Koen Holtkamp (of Mountains) on synths, trumpeter Nate Wooley and others into the studio. The side-long, three part opener "Paranoid Cat" spirals out from a groove that owes as much to Richard Lloyd and Television as John Fahey's America opus and continues through a transformation tempered by Chew's piano but eventually breaks into a neo-psychedelic wall of sound. The second side showcases Forsyth's depth with the aptly named "New Pharmacist Boogie," a ripper in the vein of a one-string John Lee Hooker pulse study dedicated to departed friend Jack Rose, and the emotionally devastating sustained blues "Front Street Drone." "Anniversary Day" fuses a lumbering pedal steel, marimba, trumpet and more into a cosmopolitan finale nodding toward Van Dyke Parks handiwork.