JOSH OTTUM & PETER SPRAGUE: One Note Chord

With a vocal range, and slightly hoarse delivery that calls to mind Michael Franks or Chuck Perrin, former San Diegan Josh Ottum has recorded a new album in Peter Sprague’s studio with Sprague sitting in on guitar.

Ottum’s compositions and arrangements sit equally astride folk and jazz. It is an interesting melding of seemingly disparate genres, yet in Ottum’s hands it is utterly seamless and organic. It’s music that would fit comfortably in both coffee houses and jazz clubs, which is no small feat. It hearkens to the early 1980s, when acoustic musicians were creating all kinds of stylistic mashups under the then-liberating umbrella of “new age” (before that term calcified into referring almost exclusively to mellow navel-gazing music).

The arrangements here are sparse: Ottum on vocals, acoustic guitar, and piano, with Sprague adding a second guitar in response to whatever Ottum is singing or playing.

The songs tackle everything from the perspective of a young child (“Car Seat”) to, well, sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what the topic is as Ottum’s lyrics tend to be fairly impressionistic.

Consider this stanza from the opening track “The Perfect Tone”:

Change in chorus
Skipping birds
If you let it
Always work
Always work

Or from “Tinsel Wings”:

Fading into space
Bridge collapses right behind the rain
Runners stand still

The combination of abstract wordplay and a playful melodies on acoustic instruments lends the project a certain dreamlike quality.

These are the sort of songs that stand up to repeated listenings, each time, through, revealing new facets to Ottum’s compositions, his and Sprague’s lovely playing, and the poetry of his lyrics.